Preface
I love getting started on new projects (and I include working on new editions of existing books in that general category). It is the perfect opportunity to say to myself: “I am going to get it right this time!”
That fantasy usually persists only for days (or maybe weeks) into a project before it fades, but in the case of the second edition of Oracle PL/SQL Best Practices, I managed to live out my fantasy all the way through. You are holding the result in your hands, and I hope you enjoy reading and learning from it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Here’s how I managed this remarkable feat: I took a vow to not let best practices get boring.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I liked the first edition of this book, and so did its many readers. Yet in hindsight, I feel as if I took a right turn when I should have kept going straight. My first book, Oracle PL/SQL Programming, has been extremely popular over the years, and many people have told me how much they like the sense of humor, the anecdotes, and the many detailed examples.
Several years after the publication of Oracle PL/SQL Programming, I wrote Oracle PL/SQL Best Practices. And somehow, for reasons I cannot recall, I managed to make this book a somewhat preachy and rigidly structured text. Luckily for me, developers seem to like lots of structure and don’t mind too much being preached at by people they trust!
But as I considered revamping this book for its second edition, I found myself thinking: best practices are really important, ...