Mastering Oracle SQL [Paperback]

Sanjay Mishra (Author), Alan Beaulieu (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0596001290 | ISBN-13: 978-0596001292 | Publication Date: April 2002 | Edition: 1

If you write programs to run against an Oracle database, you spend a lot of time and mental energy writing queries to return the data your programs need. Knowledge of SQL, and particularly of Oracle's implementation of SQL, is the key to writing good queries in a timely manner. In this book, the authors share their knowledge of Oracle SQL, and show you many creative techniques that you can use to advantage in your own applications.

This book shows you how to:

• Leverage Oracle's vast library of built-in SQL functions
• Query time-based data, and write joins involving date and time ranges
• Use Oracle SQL's hierarchical query features to deal with data best represented in a tree format
• Use DECODE and CASE to implement conditional logic in your queries
• Use Oracle's new, analytic SQL features to write ranking queries, lag and lead queries, windowing queries, and more
• Join data from two or more tables using the newly supported SQL92 join syntax

In addition, you'll see how SQL can best be integrated with PL/SQL. You'll also learn various best practices to help you write SQL queries that perform efficiently.

Precious few books on the market today go beyond discussing syntax and the barest rudiments of using Oracle SQL. This book changes that, showing you how to creatively leverage the full power of SQL to write queries in an Oracle environment.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Sanjay Mishra is a certified Oracle database administrator with more than ten years of IT experience. He has been involved in the design, architecture, and implementation of many mission-critical and decision support databases. He has worked extensively in the areas of database architecture, database management, backup / recovery, performance tuning, Oracle Parallel Server, and parallel execution. He has a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering, and a Master of Engineering degree in Systems Science and Automation. He is the coauthor of Oracle Parallel Processing and Oracle SQL Loader: The Definitive Guide (both published by O'Reilly & Associates). Presently, he works as a database architect at Dallas Based i2 Technologies, and can be reached at [e-mail].

Alan Beaulieu has been designing, building, and implementing custom database applications for over 13 years. He currently runs his own consulting company that specializes in designing Oracle databases and supporting services in the fields of Financial Services and Telecommunications. In building large databases for both OLTP and OLAP environments, Alan utilizes such Oracle features as Parallel Query, Partitioning, and Parallel Server. Alan has a Bachelor of Science degree in Operations Research from the Cornell University School of Engineering. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife and two daughters and can be reached at [e-mail].

Product Details

• Paperback: 321 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (April 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596001290
• ISBN-13: 978-0596001292
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #253,978 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #23 in Books > Computers & Technology > Databases > Oracle

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Helps you with 10g, July 22, 2004

By 

W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mastering Oracle SQL, 2nd Edition (Paperback)

[A REVIEW OF THE SECOND EDITION]

Those of you dealing with the latest Oracle 10g, and perhaps frustrated with the quality of the Oracle documentation, might want to consult this second edition. Its greatest difference compared to the first edition is simply that it deals with 10g, whereas the latter talks about 9g. Mishra and Beaulieu explain, with extensive detail and examples, the new features. Like support for unix-like regular expressions within SQL statements. Given that many Oracle users probably hail from a unix/C background, they will welcome this.

Also, for mapping between XML and SQL data types, 10g now integrates XML. This will reduce the impedance mismatch between the object oriented and relational outlooks that bedevil many programmers who have to deal with both.

The only problem I found with this book is its lack of mention of competing databases. Because the authors explicitly assume that you have already committed to using Oracle as your database. Fair enough. But perhaps occasional comments in the text, about how a given command or feature is not possible in another database would be useful and appreciated by Oracle users. Heck, to be fair, on this point, the book is at no relative disadvantage. For example, I have texts on dB2 and MySQL that likewise say zilch about their competitors.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Something for Everyone, March 15, 2003

By 

Tom Birch (BC. Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mastering Oracle SQL (Paperback)

This book presents complex stuctures in an easy to follow fashion with practical examples. I was able to apply new Oracle functions to real reporting problems immediately after reading it.

If you ever have written a PL/SQL function purely to manipulate data because you didn't think SQL would be able to do it, you need to read this book!

The book covers the spectrum from basics to the new 9i analytical functions. As such anyone can benefit from it.

The book is written to help the user understand the power of well structured SQL. It does not contain an exhaustive syntactical list (which can be easily found elsewhere) but rather outlines how to acually use SQL to achieve solid results and optimal performance. In my experience, a high percentage of users who think they know how to write good SQL, actually only know a lot of low-level syntax and are in need of the big picture this book provides.

The chapter on Dates however, does go into fascinating and exhaustive detail of the date data type structure, both pre-existing and Oracle 9i. This is an absolute must for anyone who works with a database that contains highly time sensative data, or for those who are confused by the data type.

The new features in Oracle 9i are clearly outlined such as the reporting functions for grouping at multiple levels. This book presents them in a way that opens the user's mind to endless possiblities, leaving the reader wondering how they every managed without them (or how they will manage without them until their company's next upgrade).

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good overview of Basic DML & advanced features, December 22, 2004

By 

An average joe "rm" (Reno, NV) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mastering Oracle SQL, 2nd Edition (Paperback)

I will agree with other reviewers that cite this book as an excellent resource. It is well organized and easy to follow from topic to topic without getting lost. The examples are well introduced and written with few minor errors. These will be easy to spot for someone who has used any flavor of SQL.

Some issues that I did have with the book revolve around what it isn't. Most of the book revolves around features that are new to 10g rather than a solid overview of the Oracle DML. This means that readers will not be properly introduced to string manipulation outside of the regular expression implementation which is new to 10g (Legacy DBs?). Also, you will have to look elsewhere for good information on CAST, CONVERT and case changing functions. These can be crucial as Oracle is much more strongly typed with regards to data than MS SQL Server.

As DBAs or reporting analysts aren't always privy to the latest release, I see the concentration on 10g's new features as a flaw. Over all this book will introduce you to Oracle SQL in an easy to follow manner. Experienced SQL users will be able to become functional by using this book but, will scratch their heads when they encounter the DML language gaps.