In this compact book, Steven Feuerstein, widely recognized as one of the world's leading experts on the Oracle PL/SQL language, distills his many years of programming, teaching, and writing about PL/SQL into a set of best practices-recommendations for developing successful applications. Covering the latest Oracle release, Oracle Database 11gR2, Feuerstein has rewritten this new edition in the style of his bestselling Oracle PL/SQL Programming. The text is organized in a problem/solution format, and chronicles the programming exploits of developers at a mythical company called My Flimsy Excuse, Inc., as they write code, make mistakes, and learn from those mistakes-and each other.This book offers practical answers to some of the hardest questions faced by PL/SQL developers, including:* What is the best way to write the SQL logic in my application code?* How should I write my packages so they can be leveraged by my entire team of developers?* How can I make sure that all my team's programs handle and record errors consistently?Oracle PL/SQL Best Practices summarizes PL/SQL best practices in nine major categories: overall PL/SQL application development, programming standards, program testing, tracing, and debugging, variables and data structures, control logic, error handling, the use of SQL in PL/SQL, building procedures, functions, packages, and triggers, and overall program performance.This book is a concise and entertaining guide that PL/SQL developers will turn to again and again as they seek out ways to write higher quality code and more successful applications."This book presents ideas that make the difference between a successful project and one that never gets off the ground. It goes beyond just listing a set of rules, and provides realistic scenarios that help the reader understand where the rules come from. This book should be required reading for any team of Oracle database professionals."--Dwayne King, President, KRIDAN Consulting