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Reviews of this product:
Global Search & Replace
I put this on my Amazon Wish List last year as it looked as though I might learn something new from it, and I got it for Christmas. I've recently started reading it and I have been very disappointed. Almost every time an Oracle feature is mentioned as being new in version x, the authors have got it wrong (PL/SQL stored procedures were new in 7.0 not 7.3, the term "Associative Array" is from 9i not 10g, etc). The syntax they use for querying collections using "THE(subquery)" has been deprecated since 8i, indicating that nobody has checked the manual. They briefly list the new 10g SET and MULTISET collection operators on one page (not listed in the index), wrongly claim that you can use SET with associative arrays, and then make no further mention of them. Instead they spend the next 85 pages laboriously going over basic features that have been around since 8i or earlier, often devoting a whole page to demonstrating that something is not posssible (using EXTEND with an associative array for example). They frequently confuse Varrays with Nested Tables, at one point defining a type named "VARRAY_NESTED_TABLE". They show two "alternative" syntaxes for defining an Associative Array type, that are both (a) the same, and (b) wrong. Overall I get the impression of old material being hastily edited to give an impression of a definitive guide to 10g PL/SQL features, which it is not. I really pity anyone new to PL/SQL reading this book and trying to make any sense of it.
Reasonably well written, terrible index
I bought this as a reference and rough introduction to pl/sql. The book is thick, so it will appeal to people who feel they are getting more for their money if they buy a heavy book. However, coverage is very flaky and many important features seem to have been left out, with fairly unimportant stuff taking up the space instead. For example: Today I had to learn two new things: If I could use "continue" in a for loop as well as a while loop, and how temporary tables worked in pl/sql (and what the difference between a pl/sql table and a temporary table was.) The index contains none of the terms "continue statement", "temporary table" or "pl/sql table" so finding anything at all was difficult. I have yet to find any of the answers in this book - although I did find a two-page discussion of why GOTO is still included in the language where I expected to find information on something I would actually use. If you pick this book up at a book store (as I did), it LOOKs like the kind of thing you want to get - but actual use of the book has led me to give up and just use google to find any information I need. Waste of money.
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