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Rating: 
Summary: Multiple errors w/in the book
Review: Do you know where to obtain an errata list for this book, Alexander
Rating:
Summary: Multiple errors w/in the book
Review: I am no SQL or Oracle expert so when I needed to be creative with triggers and stored procedures I choose this book. Several of the examples and ideas in the book are usefull but I have to say that there are numerous errors with spelling, switching variable names, and definitions (i.e. section 8.7.3 meaning to explain LPAD the book uses LTRIM instead). If you don't mind taking an extra minute to figure out what was meant instead of what is written in the text, pick up the book, its an ok reference. I don't think I will use another book by this publisher.
Rating: 
Summary: general discussion, good source of PL/SQL knowledge
Review: Stored procedures and especially triggers usually cooperate with other system components, they are sensitive to intricate system configuration changes. True appeciation of the power of Oracle environment comes from comparison of PL/SQL collections and APIs provided by built-in packages (like DMBS_PIPE) - with host operating system IPCs.Now we can see the challenge of BUILDING INTELLIGENT DATABASES: the book starts from PL/SQL basics and proceeds to exception handling, interprocess communication and database integrity enforcement. In ch.7 we find discussion of basic PL/SQL constructs, datatypes and data structures (including index by tables, but without collections that were added later) are covered by ch.9. Exceptions (necessary to deal with built-in packages) are described in ch.10. Material of chapters 14-17(trigger methodolgy and procedural constraints) is, in fact, software life cycle discussion: development starts from finding out what concrete objects are to be encapsulated and in what way, proprietary integrity constraints are determined. Then certain PL/SQL code is developed and tested, results are re-assessed, more code is developed, etc. - all on concrete code examples. Discussion of Mutable Table situation is very helpful. Basically, BUILDING INTELLIGENT DATABASES shows two things: how one actually builds PL/SQL applications and how general terminology can be used in the process. An important practical suggestion here is to develop triggers as wrappers for packages which is very helpful - from C++/Java point of view. Ch.19 discusses basic package testing using DBMS_OUTPUT. Package methods are usually called from other components, for example, Pro*C/C++ applications. So it is useful to simulate actual calls by special PL/SQL testing wrappers. Then actual component cooperation is tested. Sample code from the book is easy to read, I'd take it more as illustration than working demo or system configuration benchmark.
Rating:
Summary: Good introduction, but beware of the examples!
Review: This appears to be a good introduction to useful PL/Sql coding and techniques. Everything in this book is in the two Official Oracle Press PL/Sql Programming books but more time is spent explaining both the how and the why and making suggestions. But beware of the example code: some of them have typo errors and some won't run even with the typo's corrected. I sometimes had to debug and correct the code before it would run. This is not unique to this book, but it is not fun debugging code that should already run. Still, I found the book very useful.
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