View Larger Image	Steven Feuerstein O'Reilly Media, Paperback, 2nd edition, Published October 2007, 312 pages, ISBN 0596514107
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Read an excerpt: Chapter 4: What’s Code Without Variables?       Excerpt provided courtesy of O'Reilly Media. Copyright © O'Reilly Media, Inc. Written permission from the publisher is required for any use of this material.

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• Databases : Oracle
• Databases : SQL

• O'Reilly Media

In this compact book, Steven Feuerstein, widely recognized as one of the world's leading experts on the Oracle PL/SQL language, distills his many years of programming, teaching, and writing about PL/SQL into a set of best practices-recommendations for developing successful applications. Covering the latest Oracle release, Oracle Database 11g, Feuerstein has rewritten this new edition in the style of his bestselling Oracle PL/SQL Programming. The text is organized in a problem/solution format, and chronicles the programming exploits of developers at a mythical company called My Flimsy Excuse, Inc., as they write code, make mistakes, and learn from those mistakes-and each other.

This book offers practical answers to some of the hardest questions faced by PL/SQL developers, including:

• What is the best way to write the SQL logic in my application code?


• How should I write my packages so they can be leveraged by my entire team of developers?


• How can I make sure that all my team's programs handle and record errors consistently?

Oracle PL/SQL Best Practices summarizes PL/SQL best practices in nine major categories: overall PL/SQL application development; programming standards; program testing, tracing, and debugging; variables and data structures; control logic; error handling; the use of SQL in PL/SQL; building procedures, functions, packages, and triggers; and overall program performance.

This book is a concise and entertaining guide that PL/SQL developers will turn to again and again as they seek out ways to write higher quality code and more successful applications.

"This book presents ideas that make the difference between a successful project and one that never gets off the ground. It goes beyond just listing a set of rules, and provides realistic scenarios that help the reader understand where the rules come from. This book should be required reading for any team of Oracle database professionals."

--Dwayne King, President, KRIDAN Consulting

Table of Contents

Preface

1. The Big Picture
Successful Applications Are Never an Accident
Best Practices for Successful Applications

2. Real Developers Follow Standards
Best Practices for Developing and Using Standards

3. Life After Compilation
Testing, Tracing, and Debugging
Best Practices for Testing, Tracing, and Debugging

4. What's Code Without Variables?
Best Practices for Declaring Variables and Data Structures
Best Practices for Using Variables and Data Structures
Best Practices for Declaring and Using Package Variables

5. Developer As Traffic Cop
Best Practices for Conditional and Boolean Logic
Best Practices for Loop Processing
Best Practices for Branching Logic

6. Doing the Right Thing When Stuff Goes Wrong
Best Practices for Understanding Error Handling
Best Practices for Nitty-Gritty, Everyday Exception Programming
Best Practices for Coding Defensively

7. Break Your Addiction to SQL
SQL Is Bad!
General SQL Best Practices
Best Practices for Querying Data from PL/SQL
Best Practices for Changing Data from PL/SQL
Best Practices for Dynamic SQL

8. Playing with Blocks (of Code)
Best Practices for Parameters
Best Practices for Procedures and Functions
Best Practices for Packages
Best Practices for Triggers

9. My Code Runs Faster Than Your Code
Best Practices for Finding Slow Code
Best Practices for High-Impact Tuning
Best Practices for Other Tuning

A. Best Practices Quick Reference

B. Resources for PL/SQL Developers

Index

About the Author

Steven Feuerstein is considered one of the world's leading experts on the Oracle PL/SQL language, having written ten books on PL/SQL, including Oracle PL/SQL Programming and Oracle PL/SQL Best Practices (all from O'Reilly Media). Steven has been developing software since 1980, spent five years with Oracle (1987-1992) and serves as PL/SQL Evangelist for Quest Software. His Oracle PL/SQL Best Practices column is one of the most destinations on the Oracle Technology Network and he writes regularly for Oracle Magazine. Steven believes that unit testing is one of the most critical challenges facing PL/SQL developers and has been developing Quest Code Tester for Oracle to meet that challenge (www.quest.com /code-tester-for-oracle). He can be reached at steven.feuerstein@quest.com.

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