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Originally published at Internet.comCongratulations on your decision to read this book, Sams Teach Yourself PL/SQL in 21 Days, Second Edition! If you are new to the Oracle environment, this book will help you learn and master Oracle's built-in procedural language quickly. Knowledge of PL/SQL (Procedural Language/Structured Query Language) is becoming a fundamental necessity no matter which of Oracle's many products you use.
Today, on your first day, you will accomplish these tasks: *
Learn what PL/SQL is and why you should master it *
Learn how PL/SQL relates to other Oracle products *
Learn what resources you need to finish this book *
Write your first PL/SQL function
Over the remaining 20 days, you'll delve deeper into the power and capabilities of this language and learn how to leverage its power in your applications regardless of whether you are doing client/server programming with Oracle's tools (such as Developer/2000), using other front-end tools (such as PowerBuilder), or simply writing some batch jobs that run on the server.
What Is PL/SQL?
PL/SQL is a procedural language that Oracle developed as an extension to standard SQL to provide a way to execute procedural logic on the database. --------------------------------- ...
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