I went to an online bookstore recently, typed PL/SQL in the Search box, and got 38 results back, excluding this book. Thirty-eight books! As far as I could see, none of them was listed alongside the Harry Potter books as worldwide top-sellers, so what on earth would inspire a group of authors to come together to produce the thirty-ninth book on this topic?

The reason is that, despite the plethora of available books, we still encounter a great deal of poor quality or antiquated PL/SQL code in Oracle applications. From a personal perspective, I’ve worked with Oracle systems around the world, and although the applications, architectures, and methodologies have been very diverse, I’ve found two common themes in almost all of these systems. Either they steer away from Oracle-specific functionality altogether, or they use it in a haphazard and less-than-optimal fashion. Nowhere is this more evident than in the use of PL/SQL, which has been less “used” and more “abused” in many of the systems that I’ve encountered.

At least part of the problem is that the majority of PL/SQL books are only about syntax. They’ll show you how to code PL/SQL so that it will compile and execute on your systems (some books extend themselves to giving guidelines for good naming standards and coding structure). But, as with any programming language, there’s a big difference between just using the language and using it well. The key to building successful applications is the ability to take your syntax knowledge and apply it intelligently to build programs that are robust, efficient, and easily maintained. This is the motivation for our book and its title. We don’t want to make you a PL/SQL programmer—we want to make you a smart PL/SQL programmer.

Download