precisely what you need to make the most of Oracle’s powerful procedural language. The sixth edition describes the features and capabilities of PL/SQL up through Oracle Database 12c Release 1.

Hundreds of thousands of PL/SQL developers have benefited from this book over the last twenty years; this edition continues that tradition. With extensive code examples and a lively sense of humor, this book explains language fundamentals, explores advanced coding techniques, and offers best practices to help you solve real-world problems.

• Get PL/SQL programs up and running quickly, with clear instructions for executing, tracing, testing, debugging, and managing code
• Understand new 12.1 features, including the ACCESSIBLE_BY clause, WITH FUNCTION and UDF pragma, BEQUEATH CURRENT_USER for views, and new conditional compilation directives
• Take advantage of extensive code samples, from easy-to-follow examples to reusable packaged utilities
• Optimize PL/SQL performance with features like the function result cache and Oracle utilities such as PL/Scope and the PL/SQL hierarchical profiler
• Build modular, easy-to-maintain PL/SQL applications using packages, procedures, functions, and triggers

Table of Contents

Part I. Programming in PL/SQL

Chapter 1. Introduction to PL/SQL

Chapter 2. Creating and Running PL/SQL Code

Chapter 3. Language Fundamentals

Part II. PL/SQL Program Structure

Chapter 4. Conditional and Sequential Control

Chapter 5. Iterative Processing with Loops

Chapter 6. Exception Handlers

Part Ill. PL/SQL Program Data

Chapter 7. Working with Program Data

Chapter 8. Strings

Chapter 9. Numbers

Chapter 10. Dates and Timestamps

Chapter 11. Records

Chapter 12. Collections

Chapter 13. Miscellaneous Datatypes

Part IV. SQL in PL/SQL

Chapter 14. DML and Transaction Management

Chapter 15. Data Retrieval

Chapter 16. Dynamic SQL and Dynamic PL/SQL

Part V. PL/SQL Application Construction

Chapter 17. Procedures, Functions, and Parameters

Chapter 18. Packages

Chapter 19. Triggers

Chapter 20. Managing PL/SQL Code

Chapter 21. Optimizing PL/SQL Performance

Chapter 22. 1/0 and PL/SQL

Part VI. Advanced PL/SQL Topics

Chapter 23. Application Security and PL/SQL

Chapter 24. PL/SQL Architecture

Chapter 25. Globalization and Localization in PL/SQL

Chapter 26. Object-Oriented Aspects of PL/SQL

Chapter 27. Calling Java from PL/SQL

Chapter 28. External Procedures

About the Authors

Steven Feuerstein is considered to be one of the world's leading experts on the Oracle PL/SQL language, having written ten books on PL/SQL, including Oracle PL/SQL Programming and Oracle PL/SQL Best Practices (all published by O'Reilly Media). He has also published his first book for kids: http://stevenfeuerstein.com/vivianvulture. Steven has been developing software since 1980, spent five years with Oracle (1987-1992), and served as PL/SQL Evangelist for Quest Software (and then Dell) from January 2001 to February 2014. He is an Oracle ACE Director and writes regularly for Oracle Magazine, which named him the PL/SQL Developer of the Year in both 2002 and 2006. He is also the first recipient of ODTUG's Lifetime Achievement Award (2009). Steven's latest initiative is the PL/SQL Challenge (http://www.plsqlchallenge.com), a daily quiz for PL/SQL developers; hundreds of programmers play each day. Check it out and join the fun! Steven's online technical cyberhome is located at www.ToadWorld.com/SF. You can also catch up on his latest, mostly non-PLSQL rants at http://feuerthoughts.blogspot.com.

Bill Pribyl is the primary author of Learning Oracle PL/SQL and the coauthor of Oracle PL/SQL Programming and its companion pocket reference, all from O'Reilly Media. He is oddly proud of having used PL/SQL to write TCP/IP networking clients, tnsping callouts, near-realtime commodity price loaders, and transcendental functions. Bill, who holds a degree in physics from Rice University, is the former editor of the IOUG technical journal (Select) and former president of the South Central Oracle Users Group. At home with his family in Houston, Texas, Bill's current nonbillable titles include Webmaster for his neighborhood civic club, "IT Guy" for his son's Boy Scout troop, and Eucharistic Adoration Coordinator for his church. Visit Bill's firm at http://www.datacraft.com.