SECOND EDITION
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International Standard Book Number: 0-672-31025-2
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-71491
2000 99 98 97 4 3 2 1
Interpretation of the printing code: the rightmost double-digit number is the year of the book's printing; the rightmost single-digit, the number of the book's printing. For example, a printing code of 97-1 shows that the first printing of the book occurred in 1997.
Composed in AGaramond and MCPdigital by Macmillan Computer Publishing
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Publisher and President:
Richard K. Swadley
Publishing Manager:
Rosemarie Graham
Director of Editorial Services:
Cindy Morrow
Assistant Marketing Managers:
Kristina Perry
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Steve Straiger
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Todd Bumbalough
Software Development Specialist
John Warriner
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June Waldman
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Erika Millen
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Karen Clere
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Lorraine Schaffer
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Deborah Frisby
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Rhonda Tinch-Mize
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Peter Fuller
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Brad Chinn
Without the help of many people at Sams Publishing, I would not have been able to complete this book. Many thanks to Steve Straiger, acquisitions editor; Todd Bumbalough, development editor; June Waldman, production editor; and Karen Clere, technical editor.
Last but not least, I want to thank my wife, Joanne, and our children, Josh, Michael, and Daniel, for their loving support for the past several months.
David Lockman provides guidance to organizations on the use of Oracle products. He has participated in the design and implementation of client/server applications for a variety of industries. He also provides on-site training on the use of Oracle products and advises organizations on staff development.
At Oracle Corporation, Mr. Lockman was employed as a managing consultant. He was responsible for a consulting group that supported a broad range of projects, including the migration of large legacy databases to Oracle7, performance tuning, and applications development.
You can reach Mr. Lockman via e-mail at [email protected]. He also maintains a Web site at http://home.earthlink.net/~dlockman.
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Oracle is the most popular relational database management system in the world. Its popularity is the result of several factors:
This book is about a new version of the Oracle relational database management system (RDBMS) called Personal Oracle7. Personal Oracle7 is a version of the Oracle product that runs on top of Microsoft Windows 95 and Windows 3.11. Even though Personal Oracle7 is a PC-based version of the Oracle RDBMS, Personal Oracle7 provides almost the same features that exist in the versions of the Oracle RDBMS for large computer systems. As a result, Personal Oracle7 is an excellent tool for developers who intend to design applications for the Oracle RDBMS.
This book assumes that you're familiar with Microsoft Windows 95 and that you have some experience with a database--;whether relational or nonrelational.
Who will benefit from this book?
This edition contains a substantial amount of new material specifically related to the following topics:
The following typographic conventions are used in this book: