Chapter 1, introduces the SQL language and
describes its brief history. This chapter is primarily for those
readers who have little or no prior SQL experience.
You'll find simple examples of the core SQL
statements (SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE) and of
SQL's basic features.
Chapter 2, describes ways to filter data in your
SQL statements. You'll learn to restrict the results
of a query to the rows you wish to see, and restrict the results of a
data manipulation statement to the rows you wish to modify.
Chapter 3, describes constructs used to access
data from multiple, related tables. The important concepts of inner
join and outer join are discussed in this chapter.
Chapter 4, shows you how to generate summary
information, such as totals and subtotals, from your data. Learn how
to define groups of rows, and how to apply various aggregate
functions to summarize data in those groups.
Chapter 5, shows you how to use correlated and
noncorrelated subqueries and inline views to solve complex problems
that would otherwise require procedural code together with more than
one query.
Chapter 6, talks about handling date and time
information in an Oracle database. Learn the tricks and traps of
querying time-based data.
Chapter 7, shows you how to use UNION, INTERSECT,
and MINUS to combine results from two or more independent component
queries into one.
Chapter 8, shows you how to store and extract
hierarchical information (such as in an organizational chart) from a
relational table. Oracle provides many features to facilitate working
with hierarchical data, including several new features introduced in
Oracle Database 10g.
Chapter 9, talks about two very powerful yet
simple features of Oracle SQL that enable you to simulate conditional
logic in what is otherwise a declarative language.
Chapter 10, discusses the issues involved with
creating and accessing partitioned tables using SQL. Learn to write
SQL statements that operate on specific partitions and subpartitions.
Chapter 11, explores the integration of SQL and
PL/SQL. This chapter describes how to call PL/SQL stored procedures
and functions from SQL statements, and how to write efficient SQL
statements within PL/SQL programs.
Chapter 12, explores the object-oriented aspects of
the Oracle database server, including object types and collections.
Chapter 13, deals with complex grouping operations
used mostly in decision support systems. We show you how to use
Oracle features such as ROLLUP, CUBE, and GROUPING SETS to
efficiently generate various levels of summary information required
by decision-support applications. We also discuss the grouping
features that enable composite and concatenated groupings, including
the GROUP_ID and GROUPING_ID functions.
Chapter 14, deals with analytical queries and
analytic functions. Learn how to use ranking, windowing, and
reporting functions to generate decision-support information.
Chapter 15, talks about best practices that you
should follow to write efficient and maintainable queries. Learn
which SQL constructs are the most efficient for a given situation.
For example, we describe when it's better to use
WHERE instead of HAVING to restrict query results. We also discuss
the performance implications of using bind variables
vis-à-vis literal SQL.
Chapter 16, explores how the Oracle server can
store XML documents, features used to navigate, search, and extract
content from XML documents, and functions used to generate XML
documents from ordinary tables.
Chapter 17, shows how to write and interpret
regular expressions for performing advanced text searches and
substitutions.
Chapter 18, introduces the new, MODEL clause, which
lets you manipulate relational data as if it were a big,
multidimensional, spreadsheet (Oracle prefers the term
model). Model queries enable you to solve
problems using a single SQL statement that previously would have
required you to download data to a third-party, spreadsheet program
such as Microsoft Excel.
The Appendix, describes the SQL89 join
syntax, and Oracle's proprietary, outer-join syntax.
Only this syntax was available for joins until the release of
Oracle9i Database, which introduced support for
the newer, and better, SQL92 join syntax.
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