Aimed at programmers who are familiar with Visual Basic and who have been exposed to Oracle, this instructional text covers

the popular Oracle/Visual Basic client/server combination from beginning to end. The book opens with a lengthy discussion of

the unique architecture of Oracle. The author presents the basics of Oracle's components, database administration processes,

and database design issues. By the end of this first part, the reader comes away with a solid understanding of Oracle. The

second part adequately covers queries and store procedures and introduces the reader to Oracle's PL/SQL.

Next, the author devotes a section to implementing Visual Basic client applications against the Oracle back end. He presents

Open Database Connectivity (ODBC), cursors, and object linking and embedding database (OLE-DB) as well as discusses the

Microsoft JET engine, remote data objects, and ODBCDirect. All of these architectures are critical to expert database

programming in Visual Basic. The book also addresses other client design issues, such as transaction control and error

handling.

Oracle Programming wraps up with a section on advanced Oracle techniques that includes Oracle Objects for OLE--otherwise

known as OO4O. Generous but concise code examples, smart sidebars on real-world implementation, and plenty of architectural

diagrams round out this book. --Stephen Plain

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