Guide to Oracle SQL (University at Buffalo Version)

Introduction

I developed this guide as a way to present Oracle database concepts and SQL*Plus to an advanced database programming course. While teaching "Database Programming" (CIS411) at Buffalo State College for a few semesters I have researched and used quite a few different SQL textbooks. Most of these textbooks covered the SQL and database topics well enough but they tended to be written with a general audience in mind. I needed to supplement these textbooks with numerous lecture notes specific to the SQLPlus environment.

This course has some knowledge of database concepts as pre-requisites. In reality, about 25% of my students each semester were at the beginning level and the rest were at a more advanced level already.

I'd like to acknowlegde my Buffalo State College colleagues, Andrew and Maria Garrity, for sharing their curriculum and knowledge with our students and me.

This guide is loosely based on the OCA Oracle Database 12c SQL Fundamentals I Exam Guide and intended for you to learn about the Oracle database environment and the SQL database query language syntax. I will provide examples using both the sqlplus command line tool and the SQL Developer graphical interface application.

You may also want to visit one of my other guide web sites: Guide to HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, Guide to PHP & MySQL, Guide to Java Object-oriented Programming.