Introduction
Professional Oracle Programming is intended for application developers who use Oracle as their database.
As such, this book does not devote much space to topics which are primarily of interest to database
administrators, such as backup and recovery. Most importantly, this book is designed to help a programmer
understand the database issues that can have a direct impact on the operation and performance of
their applications.
What Does This Book Cover?
Although it is impossible to cover all the topics that a professional developer could use to the level of
depth required in a single book, this volume attempts to provide a foundation for these developers, as
well as guidance and examples of some of the key areas of interest and necessity. These areas include
accessing data using SQL, handling issues such as multi-user concurrency and data integrity and security,
the basics of programming with Java, PL/SQL and XML, and data warehousing. For a more complete
list of topics, please refer to the section called “How Is This Book Structured?” later in this introduction.
Who Is This Book For?
The entire topic of Oracle databases is certainly not a new one. Oracle has been one of, if not the, leading
databases in the world for almost two decades now. The standard Oracle documentation runs over 13,000
pages, and leaves out a lot of the good stuff. Determining the proper audience for this book, and writing
at a level appropriate for that audience, was the biggest conceptual challenge for all of the authors.
Through discussions early in this project, the authors and publishers of this book came up with a fairly
distinct profile of our presumed reader. This book is intended for people whose primary job is to create
application systems. They are developers, rather than database administrators.
Following through on this profile, we believe that you, the professional developer, are well informed
and skilled in the creation of these application systems. In our experience, even professional developers
may think of the database they use as nothing more than a place to store data.
This description of you, the target reader, has guided the selection of topics as well as the actual content
of this book.
What You Need to Use This Book
Although you do not necessarily need to have a working instance of an Oracle database to benefit from
this book, the book includes many examples that can be run against your Oracle database.
All of the examples have been created against Oracle Database 10g, although, with a few noted exceptions,
you could run the examples against Oracle9i. Since Oracle is a cross-platform database, the actual
operating system that your version of Oracle runs on is unimportant.
All of the examples can be run in either the standard Oracle utilities, such as iSQL*Plus, that come with
the product, or a standard development environent, including tools such as TOAD. Directions on how
to run the examples are included in Chapter 7 of this book on installing an Oracle database, or in the
chapter in which the examples are given.
Most of the screen shots in this book have used a Windows client platform, but that platform is simply a
standard used for consistency, not a requirement.
How Is This Book Structured?
In a broad sense, this book is divided up into three main areas — information you need to know about
how the Oracle database works, information that can help you to use the capabilities of the Oracle
database in creating your application systems, and information to help you achieve optimal performance
with your application systems. Although these three areas are covered in the order listed in the book,
you will find relevant information for each of these areas throughout all of the chapters, along with tips,
techniques, and code samples.
Part I: Oracle Essentials
Although the Oracle database is a standards-compliant SQL database, the architecture of the Oracle
database and the way it operates include some unique features that are crucial to your effective use of
Oracle. The first part of Oracle for Professional Developers covers topics that every developer must
understand in order to use the Oracle database effectively. Please don’t think of these chapters as simply
introductory material, since some of the information in these chapters can have an enormous effect on
the eventual operation of your applications.SapereOnLine |
