Thoroughly updated for Oracle Database 11gR2, this book is the leading reference on PL/SQL, Oracle's powerful procedural language. It's respected throughout the Oracle community as the best Oracle programming book on the market. Like its predecessors, this fifth edition of Oracle PL/SQL Programming contains language syntax, features, best practices, and optimization advice, and provides extensive code, ranging from simple examples to complex and complete real applications. A code companion on O'Reilly's website contains examples keyed to text in the book. With this book, you will learn new PL/SQL features, such as datatypes and statements, extended regular expression support, direct native code generation, a hierarchical profiler, dynamic SQL enhancements, sequences in PL/SQL expressions, and much more. New chapters in this edition cover code optimization and debugging. Indispensable reference for novices and experienced programmers alike, this book is precisely what you need to learn Oracle PL/SQL.