Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Structure of This Book











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Structure of This Book





This book is divided into 18 chapters and 1 appendix:





  • 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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