Objectives of This Book
Why did I write this book? I have the following modest objectives:
Make sure as many PL/SQL developers as possible know about packages and how to use them. Students who attend my training sessions soon come to realize after a day or two that the answer to almost any question I ask is: "Build a package." They also often stumble out of the sessions chanting the mantra: "Packages, packages, packages..." I wrote this book and the companion software because I believe that packages are the single most important element of the PL/SQL language. You can never go wrong putting your code inside a package. You will, on the other hand, almost always regret not placing your functions and procedures inside packages from the get-go.
Get my software into the hands of as many PL/SQL developers as possible. I like to see others get the benefit of my efforts. I like the idea that my prebuilt software will free up your time. This book contains a full-use version of the PL/Vision product, PL/Vision Lite, along with extensive documentation on how to use this library.
(Unless otherwise noted, all references in this book to PL/Vision are to PL/Vision Lite.) You might use just a little bit of PL/Vision; you might leverage every single package into your production applications. Many readers will do nothing more than cannibalize PL/Vision, learning from these packages how to improve their own code. All of these variations are welcome and encouraged!
Make my readers more creative and effective problem solvers. I've had a wonderful time thinking about how to modularize and construct in layers basic packages to improve PL/SQL programming. I learned about effective ways to construct packages and about all kinds of magic you can do when you internalize the features and benefits of packages stored in shared memory. When I encountered an obstacle, I didn't throw up my hands and look for a workaround. Instead, I asked myself: "What kind of package can I build to solve this problem?" That attitude forced me to be creative, and there is nothing more exciting than unleashed creativity. I hope that this book and the software that comes with it inspires every one of my readers to fashion new answers to old questions and newer answers to new questions. You will never regret the conceptual leaps you take in the process.
