Dedication;Preface; Why We Wrote This Book; Objectives of This Book; Audience for This Book; Platform and Version; Structure of This Book; Conventions Used in This Book; Comments and Questions; Acknowledgments;Chapter 1: Introduction to SQL; 1.1 What Is SQL?; 1.2 A Brief History of SQL; 1.3 A Simple Database; 1.4 DML Statements;Chapter 2: The WHERE Clause; 2.1 Life Without WHERE; 2.2 WHERE to the Rescue; 2.3 WHERE Clause Evaluation; 2.

4 Conditions and Expressions; 2.5 WHERE to Go from Here;Chapter 3: Joins; 3.1 Inner Joins; 3.2 Outer Joins; 3.3 Self Joins; 3.4 Joins and Subqueries; 3.5 DML Statements on a Join View; 3.6 ANSI-Standard Join Syntax in Oracle9i;Chapter 4: Group Operations; 4.

1 Aggregate Functions; 4.2 The GROUP BY Clause; 4.3 The HAVING Clause;Chapter 5: Subqueries; 5.1 What Is a Subquery?; 5.2 Noncorrelated Subqueries; 5.3 Correlated Subqueries; 5.4 Inline Views; 5.5 Subquery Case Study: The Top N Performers;Chapter 6: Handling Temporal Data; 6.

1 Internal DATE Storage Format; 6.2 Getting Dates In and Out of a Database; 6.3 Date Manipulation; 6.4 Oracle9i New DATETIME Features; 6.5 INTERVAL Literals;Chapter 7: Set Operations; 7.1 Set Operators; 7.2 Using Set Operations to Compare Two Tables; 7.3 Using NULLs in Compound Queries; 7.

4 Rules and Restrictions on Set Operations;Chapter 8: Hierarchical Queries; 8.1 Representing Hierarchical Information; 8.2 Simple Hierarchy Operations; 8.3 Oracle SQL Extensions; 8.4 Complex Hierarchy Operations; 8.5 Restrictions on Hierarchical Queries;Chapter 9: DECODE and CASE; 9.1 DECODE, NVL, and NVL2; 9.2 The Case for CASE; 9.

3 DECODE and CASE Examples;Chapter 10: Partitions, Objects, and Collections; 10.1 Table Partitioning; 10.2 Objects and Collections;Chapter 11: PL/SQL; 11.1 What Is PL/SQL?; 11.2 Procedures, Functions, and Packages; 11.3 Calling Stored Functions from Queries; 11.4 Restrictions on Calling PL/SQL from SQL; 11.5 Stored Functions in DML Statements; 11.

6 The SQL Inside Your PL/SQL;Chapter 12: Advanced Group Operations; 12.1 ROLLUP; 12.2 CUBE; 12.3 The GROUPING Function; 12.4 GROUPING SETS; 12.5 Oracle9i Grouping Features; 12.6 The GROUPING_ID and GROUP_ID Functions;Chapter 13: Advanced Analytic SQL; 13.1 Analytic SQL Overview; 13.

2 Ranking Functions; 13.3 Windowing Functions; 13.4 Reporting Functions; 13.5 Summary;Chapter 14: SQL Best Practices; 14.1 Know When to Use Specific Constructs; 14.2 Avoid Unnecessary Parsing; 14.3 Consider Literal SQL for Decision Support Systems;Colophon;.