Murach Joel. Murach’s Oracle SQL and PL/SQL for Developers

2nd Edition. — Mike Murach & Associates, 2014. — 648 p., 272 ill. + Code. — ISBN: 978-1-890774-80-6.Over the years, Oracle Database has gained a reputation for being expensive and difficult to teach. Today, however, there’s a free Express Edition and a free IDE called SQL Developer that makes it easier for students to enter, edit, and run SQL and PL/SQL statements on their own computers. Better yet, this book makes it easier than ever for your students to master the SQL and PL/SQL skills for working with an Oracle database.Like all Murach's books, this one has all of the Murach features that help your students learn faster and better. But here are a couple of features that are unique to this book.It shows how to use a database before how to create one
Unlike most SQL books, this one starts by showing how to query an existing database rather than showing how to create a new database. Why?
For one thing, it’s motivating to see results right away, and querying provides that for your students; database design requires more study and background before you see results. But querying also helps to provide that background, giving your students insight into the kind of decisions that have to be made in the design phase and the effects they have down the road.
As a result, doing querying first makes it easier for students to learn how to design and implement a database in section 3. And it also prepares them for using database features like stored procedures in section 4.It shows how to use Oracle SQL Developer
Unlike most Oracle books, this one shows how to use Oracle SQL Developer to enter and run SQL statements. SQL Developer is a graphical tool that’s an intuitive and user-friendly replacement for SQL*Plus, an arcane command prompt tool that has been around since the early days of Oracle. By using SQL Developer instead of SQL*Plus, your students will get more practice in less time and learn more quickly.Real-world examples range from the simple to the complex
Like all our books, this one includes hundreds of examples. In this case, though, the examples are SQL statements that range from the simple to the complex. That way, your students can quickly get the idea of how a SQL feature works from the simple examples, but they’ll also see examples that illustrate real-world complexity...a feature that’s often missing in competing books.It continues to help your students long after the course is over
Instructors tell us that students tend to keep our books to have as references on the job. So even if you don’t have time to cover everything in this book, they’ll still get their money’s worth.Who this book is for:
Application developers
I think it’s fair to say that most developers don’t know enough about SQL and the database management system they’re using. As one customer put it, "I know just enough about SQL to be a little bit dangerous!"
That’s why developers often code SQL statements that don’t perform as efficiently as they ought to. That’s why they aren’t able to code some of the queries that they need for their applications. And that’s why they don’t take advantage of all the power that Oracle Database has to offer.
That’s also why our Oracle SQL book should be required reading for every application programmer who uses Oracle Database. It shows you how to code the SQL and PL/SQL statements that you need for your applications. It shows you how to code these statements so they run efficiently. And it introduces you to many of the most useful advanced features that Oracle has to offer.Anyone who wants to become a database administrator
This book is also the right first book for anyone who wants to become a database administrator. Although this book doesn’t present all of the advanced skills that are needed by a DBA, it will get you started. Once you’ve finished it, you’ll be prepared for more advanced books on the subject.Anyone who wants to learn standard SQL
This book is also a good choice for anyone who wants to learn standard SQL. Since SQL is a standard language for accessing database data, most of the SQL code in this book will work with any database management system. As a result, once you use this book to learn how to use SQL to work with an Oracle database, you can transfer most of what you have learned to another DBMS such as MySQL, DB2, or Microsoft SQL Server.What the prerequisites are
Although you will progress through this book more quickly if you have some development experience, everything you need to know about databases and SQL is presented in this book. As a result, you don’t need to have any programming background to use this book.