Advanced Oracle SQL Programming: The Expert Guide to Writing Complex Queries (Oracle In-Focus series) (Paperback)

by Laurent Schneider (Author), Donald Burleson (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Providing the best solutions to Oracle customers, this comprehensive manual answers some of SQL's most exciting challenges. Covering all the elements of an Oracle query—including new features from Oracle versions 9i, 10g, and 11g—this guide will help information technology managers and programmers alike to gain new insight into complex queries, advanced aggregation, and analytics techniques. Introducing Model and XML as new ways to retrieve data out of the database, this sourcebook culminates as a perfect companion for advanced programmers and Oracle experts.

About the Author

Laurent Schneider is an Oracle Certified Master with more than 10 years of experience with Oracle and UNIX. He has written many articles about Oracle technologies and has provided thousands of answers on online technical forums. He is currently a management system engineer at LC Systems Engineering.

Donald Burleson is one of the world’s top Oracle Database experts with more than 20 years of full-time DBA experience. He has written 30 books, including Oracle Data Mining and Oracle Shell Scripting, and serves as editor-in-chief of Rampant TechPress.

Product Details

• Paperback: 450 pages
• Publisher: Rampant Techpress (December 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0977671585
• ISBN-13: 978-0977671588
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #149,404 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Decent book on advanced SQL but much to be desired, February 21, 2009

By	Harsha N. Hegde (NJ, USA) - See all my reviews

I am an ardent reader of Laurent Schneider's blog: http://laurentschneider.com/. His deep understanding of databases is unparalleled. The tips he provides are very practical and handy. That's probably what raised my expectations from his book: "Advanced Oracle SQL Programming". I have just finished reading through this book and I can clearly say that I am a bit disappointed with the book.
- It feels more like a collection of Laurent's notes on various Oracle SQL topics.
- There is a disconnect between one topic and the next one.
- Topics are very brief, often not exceeding 3-4 sentences. Much more detailed discussion/analysis of each concept would have made the book more readable.
- More tips/tricks (like the ones in boxes with an explosive symbol) would have made me go back to this book often.
- This may sound trivial, but the formatting of the code unnecessarily takes up too much space. e.g, in the first chapter itself, all the "INSERT" statements run to 8 pages! They could have easily been arranged 2 columns/page. They are not even required because it is available for download anyway at the book's website.
Nice things I found in the book:
- Exercise problems are really good, will make you think.
- Explanation on Joins, Subquery and Hierarchical queries are so far the best I have read.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Best SQL Reference for Oracle, January 17, 2009

By	Chen Shapira "Just a Simple DBA" (Cupertino, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

After few month of writing SQL, everyone has a good grasp of the language basics - you can use joins, where, group by and nested queries and 99% of the time, this is enough.

But sometimes, this is not enough, or maybe it does the job, but its slow or ugly. And you wonder - is there a better way to select data?

This book will show you a better way. Laurent Schneider is an Oracle developer with over a decade of experience. He shows you all the tricks and techniques that real experts use when writing queries.

"Advanced Oracle SQL Programming" covers every advanced function and feature that Oracle has to offer and gives plenty of real-life, business relevant examples of how these advanced features should be used. You'll find yourself writing better code almost immediately, and the book even contains exercises that will allow you to practice your new skills as you learn.