Review of Oracle SQL*Plus, The Definitive Guide, by Jonathan Gennick; O’Reilly, 1999

I definitely recommend this book for anyone who uses Oracle SQL*Plus. This book is organized along two main lines: the body of the book containing various examples of SQL commands, and the Appendices which are good command references. The book also has a reference to the O’Reilly web site, which has the source for most of examples in the book. Even though the examples were set up for the Windows 95 version of Oracle 8.0, I was able to run most of them on a UNIX (AIX), Oracle 7.3.3 version. Most of the changes where due to case sensitivity. Since I am not a database administrator, I couldn’t run any scripts requiring administrator privileges.

Further subdividing the main text of the book, the first part is for all users. The author starts out with background information about SQL*Plus, and its relation to some of the other Oracle components, such as PL/SQL and the Oracle database. The author then walks you through some basics of the SQL*Plus environment, such as editing, and gets you started by working with sample database included in the examples. The author also starts out early on getting you familiar with PL/SQL. Later chapters cover scripting, reporting, and extracting and loading data. The examples shown are very helpful.

The next section is for the more advanced user. This includes exploring the database, which shows how to find out the table structure, constraints, indexes, triggers, etc. You are shown how to access the tables of the data dictionary to give you these details, and how to produce a readable report from these. This section also includes advanced scripting which covers bind variables, how to simulate branching in the scripts, writing dynamic SQL scripts, and parsing and checking user input. Finally, tuning and timing queries is included in this section.

The next section deals with database administration issues. This includes giving users the privileges they need, but not letting them change things that would impact other users. Shutdown, startup, backup, and restore are also covered.

The final section is on customizing the environment, which contains hints and advice which I think are useful to all users. This covers settings which the user can control, plus global settings for all users.

Overall, I am very impressed with the book and find it to be a good reference for all user levels. If I were only allowed to have one book as a SQL*Plus reference, this would be it.