racle is an extremely powerful and flexible relational database
system. Along with this power and flexibility comes complexity,
however. In order to design useful applications that are based on
Oracle, it is necessary to understand how Oracle manipulates the
data stored within the system. PL/SQL is an important tool that is
designed for data manipulation, both internally within Oracle and externally in your
own applications. PL/SQL is available in a variety of environments, each of which
has different advantages.
The first PL/SQL book in this series wasOracle PL/SQL Programming, published
in 1996. This first edition covered releases up to PL/SQL version 2.3 with Oracle7
Release 7.3—at the time the most recent version of the database and PL/SQL. The
second edition,Oracle8 PL/SQL Programming, published in 1997, expanded on the
material in the first edition and included information up to Oracle8 Release 8.0.
The third edition,Oracle8i Advanced PL/SQL Programming, was published in 2000.
That edition focused on advanced features, up to and including Oracle8i. The fourth
edition,Oracle 9i PL/SQL Programming, was published in 2002, and served as an
introduction to PL/SQL up to and including Oracle9i