Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful intro to PL/SQL
Review: A book doesn't have to cover advanced material and tricks from gurus to be great. There are only a handful of really good Oracle books, and this is one. It takes the beginner through the important features of PL/SQL, and uses an example application that you build as you go along.The organization is great and the writing is crystal clear. It doesn't just cover syntax. It also explains when and why you'd want to use various PL/SQL features. If you're a radical C++ coding genius, maybe you want one of the other O'Reilly books on PL/SQL. On the other hand, if you've tried some other books that deal with PL/SQL and found they didn't provide the background, explanations and programming strategies you need, try this book. The authors are talented PL/SQL experts, and their presentation of the subject is great. This book is not a slap-dash effort to write a quick book. It's a solid, quality book. If you have some exposure to Oracle but have never developed PL/SQL skills, you'll like this book.
Rating:
Summary: Exactly the kind of book I was looking for
Review: As a Oracle DBA I needed an intoduction to PL/SQL.
This is exactly the kind of book I was looking for.
Excellent style, I enjoyed the time I spent reading this book. Well done.
Rating: 
Summary: Fair Guide for Learning PL/SQL
Review: I use a self-taught approach to learn new things like most people. And, like most people, I get frustrated with the lengthy superfluous nature of how-to books which throw everything in, including the kitchen sink. This book starts off well, and you can learn from it at a comfortably progressive pace, but it could use a larger scope. The author leaves a lot of code out of the book, though he does explain parts of it. In the end, the project he uses to illustrate PL/SQL becomes more complicated than it needs to be for a tutorial exercise. Still, I haven't seen anything better.
Rating:
Summary: Great right up until chapter 4
Review: I'm a programmer familiar with SQL and needing to learn PL/SQL to use with SQL Navigator and SQL*Plus. Chapter 4 suddenly assumes you'll need to work with the internet and all of the examples deal with setting up interactive web pages. That would be great for a shop using that kind of interface. In my position, I don't have access to servers that would post a page, so the book now sits on a shelf until it becomes relevant. There were no alternate examples. I was pretty disappointed. Other than that, a great book!
Rating:
Summary: Recommended
Review: I've been a self taught Oracle PL/SQL developer for two years, so I was sceptical on reading a "Learning" book. After reading the first few chapters I was able to make improvements to my PL/SQL programs. It was definitely worth the time and money. The examples are well written and simple enough to make sense, but not too simple that they are "duh" type examples. I also liked the fact that the book explains how to set up and use Oracle/Apache to make PSP pages (Stored Procedures that generate web content). The PSP section makes up a good portion of the book that I didn't know was in it before I got it. With plenty of real-world experience tips, a section on tools and security, it will be a while before I have this ingrained and used on a daily basis. I defiantly got more than I was looking for.
Rating:
Summary: Recommended
Review: I've been a self taught Oracle PL/SQL developer for two years, so I was sceptical on reading a "Learning" book. After reading the first few chapters I was able to make improvements to my PL/SQL programs. It was definitely worth the time and money. The examples are well written and simple enough to make sense, but not too simple that they are "duh" type examples. I also liked the fact that the book explains how to set up and use Oracle/Apache to make PSP pages (Stored Procedures that generate web content). The PSP section makes up a good portion of the book that I didn't know was in it before I got it. With plenty of real-world experience tips, a section on tools and security, it will be a while before I have this ingrained and used on a daily basis. I defiantly got more than I was looking for.
Rating: 
Summary: Learning Oracle Maybe, But Not PL/SQL
Review: I've been developing with Sybase and SQL Server for about 5 years with very limited experience with Oracle in that time. I purchased this book hoping to get up to speed on the differences between Oracle's PL/SQL and the Sybase/Microsoft T-SQL syntax. From the title this book seemed appropriate for the job. In short, while the book might be an adequate, albeit SLOW, introduction to Oracle, it covers very little actual PL/SQL. If you are a programer/engineer/dba looking to "learn Oracle PL/SQL", interested in practical applications of such fundamental topics as constraints, foreign keys, indexes, joins, cursors, views, triggers, corelated subqueries and the like, look elsewhere. Don't take my word for it--take a peek at the index or table of contents and you'll see that the focus of this book has very little to do with PL/SQL.
Rating: 
Summary: Overall very good
Review: I've only read three chapters so far. It's been very good actually - I knew some SQL beforehand, although nothing very complicated, and it has been pretty easy for me to understand as well as very helpful for me in learning how to use PL/SQL. It has genuinely useful examples, and also provides tips as to how to perform unit testing on stored procedures and functions. Another very useful thing the author does is list common and not-as-common mistakes that a programmer may make (which may not always result in errors or exceptions), hence possibly saving you the trouble of hours of debugging. The only problem I've had with it is that he doesn't treat foreign keys as constraints. One of his sample column declarations is: "isbn VARCHAR2(100) FOREIGN KEY REFERENCES books (isbn)", but I kept getting an error until I changed it to: "isbn VARCHAR2(100), FOREIGN KEY (isbn) REFERENCES books (isbn)". I am not sure if this is a peculiarity of my installation (running Oracle 9i), but a check online reveals that many people also consider foreign keys a constraint. Except for that problem, I would have given this book 5 stars.
Rating:
Summary: Overall very good
Review: I've only read three chapters so far. It's been very good actually - I knew some SQL beforehand, although nothing very complicated, and it has been pretty easy for me to understand as well as very helpful for me in learning how to use PL/SQL. It has genuinely useful examples, and also provides tips as to how to perform unit testing on stored procedures and functions. Another very useful thing the author does is list common and not-as-common mistakes that a programmer may make (which may not always result in errors or exceptions), hence possibly saving you the trouble of hours of debugging. The only problem I've had with it is that he doesn't treat foreign keys as constraints. One of his sample column declarations is: "isbn VARCHAR2(100) FOREIGN KEY REFERENCES books (isbn)", but I kept getting an error until I changed it to: "isbn VARCHAR2(100), FOREIGN KEY (isbn) REFERENCES books (isbn)". I am not sure if this is a peculiarity of my installation (running Oracle 9i), but a check online reveals that many people also consider foreign keys a constraint. Except for that problem, I would have given this book 5 stars.
Rating:
Summary: Everything you need to know about PL/SQL
Review: It goes straight to the point, to learn and use Oracle's PL/SQL in an effective way. This book is a gem!!
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