The book has been written to provide an excellent grounding to those who wish to learn SQL, PL/SQL and SQLJ using Oracle 8i or 9i. Like all his earlier books this book also has several illustrative examples, which have a logical link between them. Each set of examples helps build skills that will take the reader to the next set of examples, which in turn leads upwards until a strong programming foundation using the natural language of Oracle 8i or 9i has been established. Each topic is very liberally sprinkled with examples that are mapped to applications, which fit in the real world. If a grounding in Java is required a study of 'Web Enabled Commercial Application Development Using Java 2.0' written by Ivan Bayross is recommended.