Advanced Oracle PL/SQL Programming with Packages

Foreword

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

—Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, 1513

Paradigm: Shift Happens

—Author Unknown

Change is inevitable. If you aren't prepared to accept and embrace it, you are bound to miss many opportunities. I use the above phrases to remind myself to be ready for that great new idea when it comes along. They came in especially handy when I first got to know Steven Feuerstein and his views on PL/SQL.

Back in September 1995, I was the development leader for a team in the Business Applications group at Symantec and we were gearing up for a new project, namely to build a front end to the customer information in Oracle's Financials package using the Forms component of Oracle's Developer/2000 toolset. We had never used Oracle Forms prior to Version 4.5 (probably a good thing) and this would be our largest effort involving PL/SQL-based code to date, so we had become intimately familiar overnight with the concept of "change." During the analysis phase of the project, I had encountered some of Steven's work in several articles, presentations, and his first book, Oracle PL/SQL Programming. After reading the book, it was clear that he had something different to say and that we might want to listen. His use of PL/SQL and packages in particular was like nothing I had seen before. I contacted Steven and asked him to come out ...