If you're developing applications that access Oracle databases, you can save time and effort by having the database do more work for you. That's where this book comes in. This book teaches you how to write SQL statements to efficiently retrieve and update the data in an Oracle database. It teaches you how to design and create a database because that provides insight into performance and security issues. It teaches you how to use Oracle's procedural language (PL/SQL) to take advantage of powerful features like transactions, stored procedures, functions, and triggers. And it teaches you how to host an Oracle database in the cloud and use SQL Developer to run SQL statements against that database. The result? You'll learn how to write the kind of SQL and PL/SQL that makes you a more effective and valuable developer or analyst.