Oracle PL/SQL Requirements

You can take this course on Windows, Macintosh, or UNIX platforms.

This course makes use of optional On Your Own exercises. An On Your Own exercise is a good way for you to practice the skills you have learned. It is not scored and is an optional hands-on exercise that you can do if you have access to an Oracle database.
If you want to perform the optional hands-on On Your Own course exercises, you will need the following hardware and software .

In a non-procedural language such as SQL, the set of data to be operated on is specified, but not the operations to be performed. In a procedural language program, most statement execution depends on previous or subsequent statements and on control structures, such as loops or conditional branches, which are not available in SQL. For an illustration of the difference between

1. procedural and
2. non-procedural languages

, suppose that the following SQL statement queries the employees table:

SELECT employee_id, department_id, last_name, salary 
FROM employees;

The preceding statement requests data, but does not apply logic to the data. However, suppose you want an application to determine whether each employee in the data set deserves a raise based on salary and department performance. A necessary condition of a raise is that the employee did not receive more than three raises in the last five years. If a raise is called for, then the application must adjust the salary and email the manager else the application must update a report. The problem is how procedural database applications requiring

1. conditional logic and
2. program flow control

can use SQL. The basic development approaches are as follows:

I recommend that you work with a real Oracle server during this course even though this is not specifically required. To run the database script and populate the database with data, you will need access to an Oracle database server. You may also wish to install Oracle Enterprise Manager because many of the courses reference this tool.
You cannot use another brand of database for practice because the majority of this course covers Oracle's exclusive management tools, parameters, and features. If you want to look into ordering a trial version of Oracle Enterprise Edition Server, Oracle Enterprise Manager, or Personal oracle, go to the OracleStore website.
Oracle requires you to register and allows you to download the software for free. This free software is a 60-day evaluation copy.
You can run oracle on Windows, Unix and LINUX. To install Oracle, run the setup program. The installation wizard will guide you through the installation.

The houseopets.zip file contains several files that you will need to complete the course project exercises:

1. The House-O-Pets course project schema: a database diagram and a document listing of all the tables and data you need to work the course projects without any database software
2. Sample data for the optional On Your Own exercises: the SQL file will help you create the sample database for the course project

In the next lesson, the course resources will be discussed.

Click the Exercise link below to download the files you will need to complete the course project exercises and the On Your Own optional exercises. Files Required Download Exercise