Steven Feuerstein

Oracle PL/SQL expert, evangelist, author and trainer

Areas of Expertise:

PL/SQL
Oracle
stored procedures
consulting

speaking
training
writing

Biography

Steven Feuerstein is considered one of the world's leading experts on the Oracle PL/SQL language, having written ten books on PL/SQL, including Oracle PL/SQL Programming and Oracle PL/SQL Best Practices (all from O'Reilly Media). Steven has been developing software since 1980, spent five years with Oracle (1987-1992) and serves as PL/SQL Evangelist for Quest Software. His Oracle PL/SQL Best Practices column is one of the more popular destinations on the Oracle Technology Network and he writes regularly for Oracle Magazine. Steven believes that unit testing is one of the most critical challenges facing PL/SQL developers and has been developing Quest Code Tester for Oracle to meet that challenge (www.quest.com/code-tester-for-oracle).

Books

Oracle PL/SQL Language Pocket Reference by Steven Feuerstein, Bill Pribyl, Chip Dawes Fourth Edition October 2007 $14.99 USD (Read Reviews)	Oracle PL/SQL Best Practices by Steven Feuerstein Second Edition October 2007 $29.99 USD (Read Reviews)
MySQL Stored Procedure Programming by Guy Harrison, Steven Feuerstein March 2006 $44.99 USD (Read Reviews)	Oracle PL/SQL for DBAs by Arup Nanda, Steven Feuerstein October 2005 $39.95 USD
Oracle PL/SQL Programming by Steven Feuerstein, Bill Pribyl Fourth Edition August 2005 $64.95 USD (Read Reviews)	Oracle PL/SQL Language Pocket Reference by Steven Feuerstein, Bill Pribyl, Chip Dawes Third Edition April 2004 OUT OF PRINT
Oracle PL/SQL Language Pocket Reference by Steven Feuerstein, Bill Pribyl, Chip Dawes Second Edition February 2003 OUT OF PRINT (Read Reviews)	Oracle PL/SQL Programming by Steven Feuerstein Third Edition September 2002 OUT OF PRINT (Read Reviews)
Learning Oracle PL/SQL by Bill Pribyl November 2001 $49.99 USD (Read Reviews)	Oracle PL/SQL Best Practices by Steven Feuerstein April 2001 OUT OF PRINT (Read Reviews)
Oracle PL/SQL Programming: A Developer's Workbook by Steven Feuerstein, Andrew Odewahn May 2000 $49.99 USD (Read Reviews)	Oracle PL/SQL Programming: Guide to Oracle8i Featu by Steven Feuerstein October 1999 OUT OF PRINT (Read Reviews)
Oracle PL/SQL Language Pocket Reference by Bill Pribyl, Steven Feuerstein, Chip Dawes April 1999 OUT OF PRINT (Read Reviews)	Oracle PL/SQL Built-ins Pocket Reference by Steven Feuerstein, John Beresniewicz, Chip Dawes October 1998 OUT OF PRINT (Read Reviews)
Oracle Built-in Packages by Steven Feuerstein, Charles Dye, John Beresniewicz May 1998 $49.95 USD (Read Reviews)	Oracle PL/SQL Programming by Steven Feuerstein Second Edition September 1997 OUT OF PRINT (Read Reviews)
Advanced Oracle PL/SQL Programming with Packages by Steven Feuerstein OUT OF PRINT (Read Reviews)	Oracle PL/SQL Programming by Steven Feuerstein OUT OF PRINT

Articles

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Using PL/SQL Records in SQL Statements
Publish Date: Apr. 22, 2003The PL/SQL RECORD datatype has been available for years; however, its usefulness was limited because it wasn't possible to use records inside SQL statements. Oracle 9i Release 2 corrects this deficiency. In this final installment in their series on new Oracle 9i features, Steven Feuerstein, coauthor of Oracle PL/SQL Programming, 3rd Edition, and Bryn Llewellyn demonstrate how you can now employ records in UPDATE, INSERT, DELETE, and SELECT statements. Oracle 9i Release 2 Developments for PL/SQL Collections
Publish Date: Apr. 1, 2003Steven Feuerstein, coauthor of Oracle PL/SQL Programming, 3rd Edition, and Bryn Llewellyn explore PL/SQL collections in Oracle 9i Release 2, with particular emphasis on associative arrays. This is the latest installment in their continuing series on new Oracle 9i features. Find out why extending the flexibility of the collection syntax, storage, and access makes it possible to write much simpler, more efficient code than was possible in earlier versions. HTTP Communication from Within the Oracle Database
Publish Date: Mar. 4, 2003In this latest installment in their continuing series on new Oracle 9i features, Steven Feuerstein, coauthor of Oracle PL/SQL Programming, 3rd Edition, and Bryn Llewellyn take a look at Utl_Http and show how you can use it in an Oracle 9i database to implement a requestor in a B2B implementation. Multi-Level Collections in Oracle 9i
Publish Date: Feb. 11, 2003With Oracle 9i you can have multi-level collections or collections nested within collections. In the next installment in their continuing series on new Oracle 9i features, Steven Feuerstein, coauthor of Oracle PL/SQL Programming, 3rd Edition, and Bryn Llewellyn show how to work with multi-level collections, using examples that progress from the simple to the complex. Table Functions and Cursor Expressions
Publish Date: Jan. 22, 2003In their continuing series on new Oracle 9i features, Steven Feuerstein, coauthor of Oracle PL/SQL Programming, 3rd Edition, and Bryn Llewellyn introduce cursor expressions and then show how those expressions can be utilized with table functions. Native Compilation, CASE, and Dynamic Bulk Binding
Publish Date: Jan. 7, 2003In Part 4 in his series on new Oracle 9i features, Steven Feuerstein, coauthor of Oracle PL/SQL Programming, 3rd Edition, and Bryn Llewellyn cover native compilation of PL/SQL, CASE statements and CASE expressions, and bulk binding in native dynamic SQL. New Datatypes, New Possibilities
Publish Date: Dec. 9, 2002In Part 3 in his series on new Oracle 9i features, Steven Feuerstein, coauthor of Oracle PL/SQL Programming, 3rd Edition, looks at some of Oracle's new datatypes and shows how you can make them work for you. Substituting and Converting Object Types in a Hierarchy
Publish Date: Nov. 12, 2002In Part 2 in his series on new Oracle 9i features, Steven Feuerstein, coauthor of Oracle PL/SQL Programming, 3rd Edition, explores the advantages and flexibilities of object-type hierarchies by examining substitutability and type conversion. Inherit the Database: Oracle9i's Support for Object Type Inheritance
Publish Date: Oct. 29, 2002Steven Feuerstein, coauthor of Oracle PL/SQL Programming, 3rd Edition, offers a quick review of object types and then shows how you can build object-type hierarchies by taking advantage of inheritance. This is the first installment in an eight-part series on new Oracle 9i features. Not All Best Practices Are Created Equal
Publish Date: Apr. 2, 2001O'Reilly author offers his best of the best of Oracle PL/SQL Practices. By Steven Feuerstein, author of O'Reilly's Oracle PL/SQL Best Practices (April 2001). A Unit Testing Framework for Oracle PL/SQL-- What's New
Publish Date: Mar. 20, 2001utPLSQL Update The Importance of Unit Testing
Publish Date: Jan. 2, 2001A unit test is a test that a developer creates to ensure that his or her "unit", usually a single program, works properly. A unit test is very different from a system or functional test; these latter types of test are oriented to application features or overall testing of the system. You cannot properly or effectively perform a system test until you know that the individual programs behave as expected. The utPLSQL Project
Publish Date: Jan. 1, 2001utPLSQL is an open source, unit-testing framework for Oracle PL/SQL developers. Created by Steven Feuerstein, author of several classic PL/SQL books and a leading PL/SQL trainer, utPLSQL is being developed as open source, consistent with the lightweight development methodology known as Extreme Programming. Aw, Gee, Mom, Do I Have to Test My Code?
Publish Date: Jun. 1, 2000I don't really like to have to take the time to test my software (nor do I like to write documentation for it). I do it, but I don't ever really do enough of it. And I have this funny feeling that I am not alone. The overwhelming reality is that developers generally perform an inadequate number of inadequate tests and figure that if the users don't find a bug, there is no bug. Why does this happen? Let me count the ways...

Blog

Steven's blog posts are hosted at:
http://www.toadworld.com/sf

Testing and refreshing data from production

April 17 2008

As many of my readers likely know by now, I have been working for the past several years on the Quest Code Tester development effort. Code Tester is the most powerful PL/SQL test automation tool available. You describe the expected behavior of your programs and Code Tester generates your test code,… read more

Auto-formatting of templates for Toad

April 10 2008

A few months ago, I posted on this blog an explanation of how to use Toad's Code Templates to standardize development and improve productivity. I included an XML document that contains over 20 templates that I thought you might find useful. I also asked my readers to produce XML transformations… read more

Wierd PL/SQL

March 17 2008

Collaborate08, annual conference of the International Oracle User Group, and several other national and international user groups, will be held in Denver this year, from April 13th to the 16th. I am going to present three papers, including (for the first time) Weird PL/SQL. I thought you might enjoy reading… read more

Just how popular is PL/SQL?

February 04 2008

Just how popular is PL/SQL? And how many PL/SQL developers are there "out there"? These are surprisingly hard questions to answer. Officially and even unofficially, Oracle Corporation's point people on PL/SQL do not have any idea (or refuse to say) how many PL/SQL developers there are. I take the approach of doing… read more

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