Chapter 1: Introduction

Overview

In this chapter, you will

• Learn about relational databases.

• Be introduced to the Structured Query Language (SQL), which is used to access a database.

• Use SQL*Plus, Oracle s interactive text-based tool for running SQL statements.

• Briefly see PL/SQL, Oracle s procedural programming language built around SQL. PL/SQL allows you to develop programs that are stored in the database.

Let s plunge in and consider what a relational database is.