About This Book
By reading and using the resources in this book, you will be better able to take advantage of the PL/SQL-based functionality in the Oracle database that is the most critical for DBAs.
We don’t attempt to provide comprehensive coverage of the Oracle PL/SQL language in this book. We provide a solid overview of PL/SQL in Chapter 1, but otherwise assume a basic working knowledge of the language. If you are new to PL/SQL, we suggest that you get started by reading Learning Oracle PL/SQL. From there, Oracle PL/SQL Programming, Fourth Edition, will serve as a comprehensive reference and user guide. That 1,200-page volume is the classic book on both language fundamentals and advanced features.
Oracle PL/SQL for DBAs consists of eight chapters and one appendix, as follows:
Chapter 1, Introduction to PL/SQL, provides a whirlwind tour of the PL/SQL language, touching on all of the topics DBAs will need to become familiar with, from the basics of the PL/SQL block structure, identifier construction, and program data declarations, to the use of control and error-handling statements, to the construction of procedures, functions, packages, and triggers in PL/SQL.
Chapter 2, Cursors, describes PL/SQL cursors and how you can improve database performance by taking advantage of such features as cursor reuse, cursor soft-parsing and soft-closing, and various characteristics of implicit and explicit cursors. It also describes the use of REF CURSORs, bulk fetching, cursor parameters, and ...