Oracle PL/SQL Programming

For the past ten years, O'Reilly's Oracle PL/SQL Programming has been the bestselling book on PL/SQL, Oracle's powerful procedural language. Packed with examples and helpful recommendations, the book has helped everyone--from novices to experienced developers, and from Oracle Forms developers to database administrators--make the most of PL/SQL.

The fourth edition is a comprehensive update, adding significant new content and extending coverage to include the very latest Oracle version, Oracle Database 10g Release 2. It describes such new features as the PL/SQL optimizing compiler, conditional compilation, compile-time warnings, regular expressions, set operators for nested tables, nonsequential collections in FORALL, the programmer-defined quoting mechanism, the ability to backtrace an exception to a line number, a variety of new built-in packages, and support for IEEE 754 compliant floating-point numbers.

The new edition adds brand-new chapters on security (including encryption, row-level security, fine-grained auditing, and application contexts), file, email, and web I/O (including the built-in packages DBMS_OUTPUT, UTL_FILE, UTL_MAIL, UTL_SMTP, and UTL_HTTP) and globalization and localization.

Co-authored by the world's foremost PL/SQL authority, Steven Feuerstein, this classic reference provides language syntax, best practices, and extensive code, ranging from simple examples to complete applications--making it a must-have on your road to PL/SQL mastery. A companion web site contains many more examples and additional technical content for enhanced learning.

Steven Feuerstein is considered the world's leading expert on the Oracle PL/SQL language and an excellent evangelist for the book and the PL/SQL language in general. He travels extensively, giving seminars, keynote addresses, and technical presentations at database conferences. He writes for Oracle Magazine and other publications, and is the most popular "columnist" for the Oracle Technology Network (OTN), which gets several million hits a month. He is a very popular writer and speaker, well known and respected by Oracle Corporation and its users worldwide.

Bill Pribyl, author, teacher, and software consultant, is the primary author of Learning Oracle PL/SQL, and the co-author of Oracle PL/SQL Programming and its companion pocket reference, all published by O'Reilly Media. An Oracle user since 1986, Bill has consulted on many aspects of using Oracle products. He recently spearheaded PLNet.org, a Web-based repository where developers can share open source PL/SQL.