oracle - Setting up a development environment to learn PL/SQL

Question

I want to setup a sandbox environment to hone in on my pl/sql and database skills. I was thinking of downloading the full version of Oracle 11G and using SQL Developer. Setting up a test database and working from there.

Any recommendations? Do you think this is a good approach?

Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

If you want to sandbox the whole environment, Oracle provide pre-built VM images which contain an 11g database, SQL Developer and other tools; more info here, and if you just want PL/SQL the first version listed should have everything you need.

As well as being very quick and easy to set up - no DBA knowledge required - it's completely isolated from any real environments you want to avoid interfering with, can run on any machine and O/S that runs VirtualBox, and best of all, if (or when) you really mess something up you can trash it and start again.