Considered the best Oracle PL/SQL programming guide by the Oracle community, this definitive guide is precisely what you need to make the most of Oracle's powerful procedural language. The sixth edition describes the features and capabilities of PL/SQL up through Oracle Database 12c Release 1. Hundreds of thousands of PL/SQL developers have benefited from this book over the last twenty years; this edition continues that tradition. With extensive code examples and a lively sense of humor, this book explains language fundamentals, explores advanced coding techniques, and offers best practices to help you solve real-world problems. Get PL/SQL programs up and running quickly, with clear instructions for executing, tracing, testing, debugging, and managing code Understand new 12.1 features, including the ACCESSIBLE_BY clause, WITH FUNCTION and UDF pragma, BEQUEATH CURRENT_USER for views, and new conditional compilation directives Take advantage of extensive code samples, from easy-to-follow examples to reusable packaged utilities Optimize PL/SQL performance with features like the function result cache and Oracle utilities such as PL/Scope and the PL/SQL hierarchical profiler Build modular, easy-to-maintain PL/SQL applications using packages, procedures, functions, and triggers