Errata

There should be a summary of the CASE ... END construct here or hereabouts;
description of DECODE() (page 191) should say "see also CASE in table 1.2" or
similar.

The syntax says:
CREATE [GLOBAL] [TEMPORARY] TABLE...

This should read:
CREATE [GLOBAL TEMPORARY] TABLE...

There is no mention of the required ON COMMIT DELETE ROWS as or ON COMMIT
PRESERVE ROWS clause. Where should this go?

Furthermore, the index is missing this, in my humble opinion, key entry "Temporary
Table" or "Tables, temporary" entirely.

Please let me know where syntactically the ON COMMIT DELETE ROWS or ON COMMIT
PRESERVE ROWS belong so I may update my book.

The ALTER TABLE statement does not show the ENABLE/DISABLE clause.
For example a construct such as this is not listed.

ALTER TABLE xxxx
ENABLE CONSTRAINT xxxx_pk

or:
ALTER TABLE kkkkk
ENABLE PRIMARY KEY
USING INDEX TABLESPACE tbsp_idx
STORAGE (INITIAL 1 M
NEXT 500 K)

(Note the other disable/enable clauses on the statement only reference the state of
the constraint when a column is created or modified.)

ALTER TABLE scott.emp
MODIFY (empno CONSTRAINT pk_emp PRIMARY_KEY) ;

The first thing wrong with this sample is that 'PRIMARY_KEY' should be
'PRIMARY KEY' (two words). The second thing is that this example won't
work. It generates an error every time you try it ("constraint
specification not allowed here"). In fact, I've tried many different
variations of this statement. Both the O'Reilly documentation and the
Oracle Press documentation would lead the casual reader to believe that
this should work. However, I believe that the only way to add a constraint
to an existing table is via a table-level constraint:

ALTER TABLE scott.emp
ADD CONSTRAINT pk_emp
PRIMARY key (empno) ;

The documentation from Oracle does not explain that that this is the only
way to add a constraint to an existing table/column. So, if your research
verifies this finding, adding a comment about this to "Oracle SQL" would
mean that your reference material would be *more* complete than the Oracle
documentation. But we knew that, right?

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9781565926974/errata/orsqlter.unconfirmed

with comment:
This page was last modified on September 24, 2002

Item #91 says that the book is totally wrong - and that Oracle documentation
is totally wrong. While there may be a typo in the book (clearly is) and
maybe the example is not valid for primary keys - the reader is wrong on the
point about this concept not working for anything. This form you have shown
works fine for NOT NULL vs NULL constraints. For example,

create table foo (test varchar2(1));
alter table foo modify (test not null);
alter table foo modify (test null);

I have the Sept 2000 (1st edition) of the book. In the preface page xxviii in the paragraph 'versions of oracle' the author states
that all information presented is accurate for oracle version 8.1.6

The syntax for UPDATE suggests that a 'SAMPLE' clause is available. Page 131 suggests that this 'specifies that a random sample of
the rows in the table be updated'.

I have consulted the documentation for Oracle 8.1.6 and no SAMPLE clause exists for an UPDATE, only SELECT. Hence the syntax prese
nted is not correct and the last example on page 132 does not work.

It lists that the PRIMARY KEY can have one or multiple columns. In fact, you cannot
list any column.

Another error with the references clause of the foreign key:
It now shows REFERENCES table (column, column). That's not possible if it's a column
constraint. How can a single foreign key column reference a multi-foreign key
column?

Please add a summary of analytic functions to the next edition.

{208 to 210} explains how to edit the SQL*Plus buffer, but do
not mention the
command to run the command in the buffer after it is edited (RUN
or /)

The syntax for declaring a variable scalar is given as

variable_name type [CONSTANT] [NOT NULL] [:=initial value]

when it should be

variable_name [CONSTANT] type [NOT NULL] [:=initial value]