Is This Book for You?
I am going to assume that most readers are using, or will soon be using, the Oracle database server, probably a relatively recent version that is still supported by Oracle. Beyond that, how many of the following apply to you?
You are a new Oracle application developer who can spell PL/SQL but that's about it.
You are a new Oracle database administrator (DBA), and you need to review PL/SQL written by application developers.
You are a new DBA and you want to automate many of your tasks.
You need to use one of Oracle's options that requires PL/SQL knowledge (such as the Spatial Data Option, used for storing and retrieving geographic information in the database).
You are a programmer familiar with another database like SQL Server, and your job now requires you to deal with Oracle.
If even one of those descriptions is true, this book is for you. Whether you already know another programming language like Java or Transact-SQL[1], or this is your first exposure to programming, this book should get you off the ground. If, on the other hand, you are proficient in C++ and you eat new languages for breakfast, you might want to skim (or even skip) this book and jump into one of the other books in O'Reilly's series of books on Oracle development.
[1] Transact-SQL, or T-SQL, is a language similar to PL/SQL that is used with two other database management systems: Microsoft's SQL Server and Sybase.
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