Designed for both the novice programmer as well as the experienced systems engineer, this text seeks to show the reader how to develop, test, debug and tune Oracle applications using Visual Basic, SQL/Windows and developer/2000. New features such as LOBs and ADTs are integrated throughout the book. It also includes common business problems and their solutions using PL/SQL, using real-world examples where applicable. PL/SQL is Oracle's extension to the SQL query language. the "PL" stands for "Programming Language", which is what PL/SQL adds to SQL. With PL/SQL users get tools traditionally available in third-generation languages, such as C or Cobol. These include such things as database triggers and stored procedures. The combination of PL/SQL and SQL gives users a powerful development language, with which one can do much more complex and powerful manipulations of data stored in an Oracle database. PL/SQL is available from all Oracle development tools, including Developer and Designer/2000, the Oracle pre-compilers and in the Oracle7 server itself. The new relational features of PL/SQL 3.0 should be easy to learn for those who are familiar with Version 2.0 and Oracle7. The object-oriented features may be more difficult, but are still straightforward.