Re: Self-Study CDs

From: Daniel Morgan <damorgan_at_x.washington.edu>
Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 06:50:05 -0800
Message-ID: <1074955742.654297@yasure>

curious wrote:

> Daniel Morgan <damorgan_at_x.washington.edu> wrote in message news:<1074663192.230601_at_yasure>...
>

>>It would help to know the following:
>>
>>1. What already do you know?
>>2. What are your previous experiences ... databases and languages?
>>3. Do you understand normalization?
>>4. What do you expect to get out of it?
>>
>>My general statement would be no. But I have been known to be wrong ... 
>>and I've been known to change my mind.

>
>
>
> I know theorectical aspect of DBMS including normalization,
> intergrity constraint, etc. and know intro level SQL and very little
> PL/SQL. Would I benefit from those cd ir should I just use the
> tutorials links provided such as sqlzooo.net, etc. first at this point
> before getting the self-study cd?
>
> I would like to achieve skill level of the 1st level of Oracle
> certificate quickly.
>
> BTW, I know basic C, C++, Java, and some web programming languages but
> just basic level. Also a bit of visual basic. No .net or C# exposure
> yet.

Based on your background the only thing you are going to learn is syntax. And syntax is the least important and challenging part of learning PL/SQL. As one PSOUG member said: "Syntax is boring."

For example the CD might teach you the following syntaxes:

--============================

CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE exp_all IS

CURSOR my_cur IS
SELECT zip_code FROM zip_city;

my_rec my_cur%ROWTYPE;

BEGIN
   OPEN my_cur;
   LOOP

      FETCH my_cur INTO my_rec;
      EXIT WHEN my_cur%NOTFOUND;

      NULL;

   END LOOP;
   CLOSE my_cur;
END exp_all;
/

--============================

CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE exp_and_imp IS

CURSOR my_cur IS
SELECT zip_code FROM zip_city;

BEGIN
   FOR my_rec IN my_cur
   LOOP
      NULL;
   END LOOP;
END exp_and_imp;
/

--============================

CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE imp_all IS

BEGIN
   FOR my_rec IN (SELECT zip_code FROM zip_city)    LOOP
      NULL;
   END LOOP;
END imp_all;
/

--============================

Wonderful ... now you have learned three different ways to write a simple stored procedure with a cursor loop. You can copy and paste one or more of these as a framework and it took you five minutes to look them over and get the general idea.

But what you have really learned? They all do the exact same thing. Do you know which one to use? Do you know why? Do you know how to debug them if you have a syntax error? Do you know how to test them in an application to determine which part is slow or using the most resources? No. And the CD won't help with that either.

I'd suggest a "beginners" book for syntax, then I'd suggest Tom Kyte's Effective Oracle by Design first and Expert one-on-one Oracle second, followed by a lot of time at http://tahiti.oracle.com. It will save you money and you will learn much more. Not as much as at a good college or university program but far more than with any CD set.

-- 
Daniel Morgan
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/oad/oad_crs.asp
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/aoa/aoa_crs.asp
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
(replace 'x' with a 'u' to reply)

Received on Sat Jan 24 2004 - 08:50:05 CST