Quest Software invites you to:

You Wrote WHAT?

- Correcting PL/SQL Worst Practices
- Survey of Oracle Database 10g PL/SQL New Features

Presented by Steven Feuerstein

Join us for the one-day training seminar at either of the following locations:

4th October, Dublin
Clontarf Castle Hotel, Castle Avenue, Clontarf, Dublin 3

5th October, Edinburgh
Radisson SAS Hotel, 80 High Street, The Royal Mile, Edinburgh, EH1 1TH

6th October, Manchester
Midland Hotel, Peter Street, Manchester, M60 2DS

7th October, London
Cavendish Conference Centre, 22 Duchess Mews, London, W1G 9DT

Overview
About Steven Feuerstein
Pricing
Registration & Payment
Agenda
Enquiries

Overview

This new training session, created specially for Quest Software Europe, will bring you up to date on all the new PL/SQL features available in Oracle 10g releases 1 and 2, from fundamental enhancements of the PL/SQL compiler to fantastic new collection capabilities.

Simply learning about new features however, doesn't necessarily give you much guidance in how to apply the functionality. Popular PL/SQL trainer and author, Steven Feuerstein, will therefore take you on an entertaining journey through a startling geography of truly awful or out-of-date PL/SQL code and provide directions for reaching the new world of PL/SQL where your code runs much faster, is easier to maintain, and no longer reflects the old-fashioned way of writing code.

This training seminar will cover Correcting PL/SQL Worst Practices and Survey of Oracle Database 10g PL/SQL New Features. Topic covered in this section will include:

1. Correcting PL/SQL Worst Practices
The bad old days of cursor FOR loops
Hard-coding? Let me count the ways…
Optimistic programming or just plain laziness?

2. Survey of Oracle Database 10g PL/SQL New Features
The amazing new PL/SQL compiler
Collections get better and better
Leverage new and enhanced built-in packages

If you attended previous Steven Feuerstein seminars run by Quest, you will still find it well worth your time to attend “You Wrote WHAT?”

First, Steven will cover all new functionality for PL/SQL developers in Oracle Database 10g releases 1 and 2. Even if you are not yet running Oracle Database 10g, you should be aware of these new capabilities.

Second, even when covering topics included in previous seminars, Steven will be taking a different approach in "You Wrote WHAT?". Rather than describe a feature and show examples, he will start with a code sample that demonstrates a problematic way of using PL/SQL and then step through a transformation to a best practice, latest feature implementation.

About Steven Feuerstein

Steven Feuerstein is considered one of the world's leading experts on the Oracle PL/SQL language. He is the author or co-author of Oracle PL/SQL Programming, Oracle PL/SQL Best Practices, Oracle PL/SQL Programming: Guide to Oracle8i Features, Oracle PL/SQL Developer's Workbook, Oracle Built-in Packages, Advanced Oracle PL/SQL Programming with Packages, and several pocket reference books (all from O'Reilly). Steven is a Senior Technology Advisor with Quest Software, has been developing software since 1980, and worked for Oracle Corporation from 1987 to 1992. He is currently designing and building Qnxo (www.qnxo.com), the world's first active mentoring software.

While the training seminar is presented lecture-style, Feuerstein makes extensive use of live code examples and challenging quizzes to fully engage attendees and help them get the most out of their experience.

Pricing

Since attendance is limited, early registration is recommended as in the past these training days have been over-subscribed.

Usually Steven’s two day training costs £750. Quest Software is pleased to offer this one-day training session for £190! (exc. VAT) (IE €350). In return you will receive unique training that will utterly transform the way your write PL/SQL based applications along with a copy of Steven Feuerstein’s seminar training material presented on the day. Lunch, snacks and refreshments will be provided. You will also have the opportunity to win various books and other great prizes in our prize draw.

Registration & Payment!

If you wish to attend the training at any city, please register now!

The link above point’s to a registration page. Simply select Amsterdam city, then complete the registration form. Payment is available by credit card or debit card, which is managed securely through WorldPay. (N.B. Payment is not accepted by American Express).

Alternatively you may pay by providing a purchase order number if credit card payment is not convenient. Please note that full payment is required within 30 days of registration, or for those registering within 30 days of the event, payment is to be received 5 working days before training.

On receipt of your registration an invoice/receipt will be sent by email and in the post.

Refund Policy:
All cancellations to bookings must be made 10 working days prior to the start of the training. Those cancelled within 10 days of the training seminar, the training fee is non-refundable.

Agenda

Correcting PL/SQL Worst Practices

We all make mistakes; the challenge – and greatest satisfaction – comes from learning from our mistakes and applying them to future adventures. This seminar offers takes attendees through a series of code transformations. We start with examples of all-too-typical code that contains a number of classic mistakes or misunderstandings regarding how to write PL/SQL applications. We then step through a transformation of that code, applying best practices and the latest features of PL/SQL, until we come to a far better state of the program.

Here are a few of the journeys we will take.

The bad old days of cursor FOR loops
In the bad old days, we didn't think twice about using cursor FOR loops: quick and easy way to fetch a single row, simplest way to iterate through multiple rows. At back then (as in Oracle8!), this made perfect sense. But with FORALL and BULK COLLECT, along with SAVE EXCEPTIONS and INDICES OF clauses, our world and way we should write SQL inside PL/SQL has changed forever.

Hard-coding? Let me count the ways....
Literal values, direct datatype declarations, SQL statements, -20NNN error numbers...the list of hard-codings inside PL/SQL is long, bewildering and intimidating. It's not easy to keep hard-codings out of your code, but once you acknowledge all the scenarios that constitute hard-coding you can then proceed to remove them.

Optimistic programming or just plain laziness?
We are generally challenged sufficiently to get our programs working properly. Thinking about and incorporating error handling into our programs often comes later or not at all. We will start with very poorly implemented error handling section and apply a variety of recent PL/SQL language enhancements to bring it up to 21st century standards.

Survey of Oracle Database 10g PL/SQL New Features

Oracle Database 10g PL/SQL Releases 1 and 2 include significant, very fundamental improvements to the compiler. In addition, nested tables and FORALL are enhanced in several key ways, and a variety of built-in packages are improved and introduced.

The amazing new PL/SQL compiler...

• now automatically optimizes your code, in many cases doubling the speed of your PL/SQL programs without you having to make a single change.
  
• gives you feedback or warnings on your code to help you improve the performance and functionality of your code. It identifies unreachable lines of code, functions that don't return values, and more.
  
• supports conditional compilation, which means that you can now support multiple versions of Oracle functionality in a single body of code, automatically include or exclude debugging/tracing logic, and more.
  

Collections get better and better...

• Nested tables now offer high-level set operations, including compare, union, intersect and minus.
  
• FORALL binding arrays no longer need to be sequentially-filled. Instead, use the VALUES OF or INDICES OF clauses to finesse this high-performance DML execution mechanism.
  

Leverage new and enhanced built-in packages....

• Trap errors within PL/SQL and obtain the line number on which the error was raised with DBMS_UTILITY.FORMAT_ERROR_BACKTRACE.
  
• Leave behind the bad old days of DBMS_OUTPUT with some very nice loosening of restrictions on line length and buffer size.
  
• Send mail with extreme ease with the new UTL_MAIL package.
  

Hotel Information

If you require accommodation for these training days, here are some hotels nearby each venue:

Dublin
Clontarf Castle Hotel
Crowne Plaza Hotel
Holiday Inn

Edinburgh
Radisson SAS Hotel
Carlton Hotel
Scotsman Hotel

Manchester
The Midland Hotel Palace Hotel
Radisson SAS Edwardian Hotel

London
Jurys Clifton Ford Hotel
Holiday Inn

NB: Quest Software has no affiliation with any of the hotels listed above. Look forward to seeing you!

Leanne Giles
UK Marketing Executive
Quest Software

Enquiries

For any other enquireies you may have regarding these training days:
Email:Programmers.training@uk.quest.com
Tel: +44 (0) 1753 483270