No comments about Practical Oracle Security: Your Unauthorized Guide to Relational Database Security.

No comments about Oracle 11g New Features: Get Started Fast with Oracle 11g Enhancements (Oracle In-Focus series).

5 comments about Oracle Database 10g PL/SQL 101.

1. With all the many Oracle Press books I have been able to review, I have not yet been disappointed by one of them. They have consistently been written clearly, been relevant, and valuable in real-world Oracle development. This book is of course no exception. It is written as a beginning guide to not only Oracle development but as an entry-level text to SQL syntax and concepts as well.
   
   After a good introduction to what a database is, the author begins into a tutorial on basic SQL syntax. In this introductory section, the reader learns how to create tables, write INSERT statements, and then select the data back out via the SELECT statement. The author quickly moves to more advanced techniques, illustrating the use of the WHERE clause, and discusses use of the UPDATE statement.
   
   Practical use of the techniques just discussed will likely be implemented in SQL*Plus, so the author begins a very thorough discussion of this tool. Many of the potential problems a user might experience with SQL*Plus are covered and solutions are provided. I was quite pleased with how extensive this chapter covers the topic of SQL*Plus. It is an excellent introduction to this tool.
   
   The author then begins to discuss more advanced database techniques, including the use of indexes and constraints. Finally, the author begins a discussion of basic PL/SQL syntax. This is really my only problem with the book: the book is called PL/SQL 101, yet only the last chapter is dedicated to discussing the subject. Sure, the proceeding material is necessary to have the framework to discuss PL/SQL. I just think the title is a bit misleading.



2. Trys to review all of Oracle 10G and basic SQL commands in less than 360 pages. Too high level and contains very little PL/SQL included.



3. I bought this book as a compliment to a current course I'm taking on DB systems. Knowing nothing about Oracle and very little about SQL, I've found this book to very informative thus far. Though I'm still reading this book, it is the perfect companion for someone new to Oracle PL/SQL and SQL.



4. This book is good for beginner. It introduces most of the basic pl/sql fundamentals.



5. I don't know why they called it PL/SQL 101, given that only 2 out of 11 chapters actually are about or even mentions PL/SQL. What it actually is is a brief introduction to databases, Oracle 10g, and brief explanations of various parts of that.
   
   It starts out with explaining what a database and a spreadsheet is, and then goes on to try to teach you a bit about everything in only a few pages. If I
   
   would have to guess, the target audience for this book would have to be not too technical management, to establish a brief understanding of what Oracle is so that they can actually talk with the database administrators. Still it sometimes delves into technical details that is of no use to that
   audience.
   
   For people who actually know what Oracle is (and are likely buyers of a title like this), it is mostly a waste of time.
   
   Still giving it 2 stars, since most people reading this book would probably at least pick up one or two things they didn't know...

5 comments about The New New Thing : A Silicon Valley Story.

1. A must read for any entrepreneur or intrapreneur(someone within a company who must innovate). Lewis opens with stories about Jim Clark -- reknown Silicon Valley entrepreneur and innovator and his boat that 'built Netscape"...the book talks about Netscape which Lewis says launched the Information age (it may or may not have but it certainly ushered in the IPO era and online businesses. Interesting what has since happened to Silicon Graphics and Healtheon that was supposed to turn the health care industry 'on it's head'. The inside cover talks about --- what else-- Paradigm shift in American culture-- from conventional business models (the old economy) to the new economy. Yet in retrospect we know that a mix of the best of both is really probably the way to go. The titles of the chapter are more clever than the chapters themselves. I personally would have liked to see more about different innovators not just Clarke but then I didn't write the book. The chapter titles include "Pasts in a Box" Disorganization Man, Home of the Future God Mode -- How Chickents Become Pork, Cheese Sandwiches for Breakfast, Chasing Ghosts, The Turning Point and The New New Thing....



2. If you have read any of Michael Lewis's other books and found them enjoyable (either writing style or topic), you will find this a good read, worthy of your time. You will learn a little about the atmosphere of Silicon Valley during the height of the bubble / late 90s as well as about a very unique figure who helped (over exagerated, per Economist) start it all.



3. "The New New Thing" tells two stories. The first is the story of Jim Clark, a technical entrepreneur who founded three companies -- Silicon Graphics, Netscape, and Healtheon -- that achieved phenomenal heights during the Internet boom of the 1990's. Clark is, to say the least, an interesting character; at least two of Clark's business associates are quoted in the book calling him a "maniac". Clark is driven almost entirely by an unending greed, so for me at least, he quickly became an unsympathetic character around which to hang an entire book. Another criticism I have is that far too many pages of the book are spent on Clark's quest to build and debug Hyperion, the world's largest computer-controlled sailboat. These sections were a distraction from the rest of the narrative. (By the way, it's pretty clear that although they may have been smart, the people writing the software for Hyperion -- including Clark himself -- were all pretty lousy software engineers.)
   
   The second story is that of Silicon Valley, and it doesn't come off looking much better than Clark. Lewis seems to have been granted incredible access to Clark's life, which included the ability to interview and attend meetings with the Valley's top movers and shakers -- the engineers, senior managers, and venture capitalists who fund them. As a computer scientist who has lived and worked in the Valley since 1991, I found this material to be enlightening, and certainly the strongest part of the book. Perhaps most fascinating is the way the decisions of the venture capital (VC) firms and investment banks are based so much on perception rather than sound reasoning. For example, one minute the VCs are writing off their Healtheon investments as a total loss, but the next minute -- when Clark offers to invest $40M of his own money in the failing venture -- they all clamor to invest more in it. Sadly, during the "irrational exuberance" of the late 1990's, this was actually a winning strategy.
   
   One danger in writing a book about the new new thing -- at the height of the Internet bubble no less -- is that it can quickly become old. And this book has not aged well. Yes, Jim Clark was the first person in Silicon Valley to have founded three companies with a market capitalization exceeding $1 billion, and yes, he made himself and many others around him obscenely rich. But most of the companies he started have not been lasting successes: as of this writing in 2007, Silicon Graphics is dying, having lost tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in each of the last four fiscal years; Netscape was acquired by AOL, whose subsequent acquisition by Time Warner nearly killed the latter company; Healtheon merged with WebMD, whose business model is substantially less ambitious than Clark's original concept for the company; and myCFO, the newest new enterprise mentioned at the end of the book, morphed into a company that offered illegal tax shelters to wealthy clients, came under investigation by the IRS, and was eventually sold for only one third of the original money poured into it. Toward the end of the book, Lewis also wryly mocks John Doerr's VC firm Kleiner Perkins for paying $25M for a 33% stake in Google, which he writes "consisted of a pair of Stanford graduate students who had a piece of software that might or might not make it easier to search the Internet." Poor Kleiner Perkins. Their Google investment was obviously a terrible mistake.
   
   Michael Lewis is a great writer, but I enjoyed two of his other books far more: Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street and Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game.
   
   All in all, "The New New Thing" does a good job of exposing the underbelly of Silicon Valley capitalism. But its focus on Clark and companies born out of the Internet bubble gives a distorted picture of the challenges in founding and running a technical startup. For a more accurate depiction, I recommend Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure.



4. I'm a big fan of Michael Lewis. He usually brings characters and situations to life and provides a perspective on a situation that introduces me to a new way of looking at things. That's not the case here.
   
   I get the feeling when Michael Lewis got permission to follow Jim Clark around for several months to write about him he thought he'd hit the mother load of great book material. Here was a guy who had traipsed through the daunting world of technology with a seeming Midas touch. Heck, the man had started Silicon Graphics and Netscape.
   
   As I read the book, however, something strange happened, I started wondering, "When did Michael Lewis realize he was following the most improbably boring man in the world?" Jim Clark should be fascinating; he starts huge companies and turns venture capitalists on their ears, he flies helicopters, rides motorcycles and builds ludicrously complex, large and expensive sailboats. Jim Clark is a man who is never satisfied and always striving for the "New, New Thing." Yet somehow, Jim Clark is also apparently stone cold dull.
   
   In the course of the whole book, not one Jim Clark quote is interesting, entertaining, or insightful. It doesn't seem like Clark won't open up to Lewis, it's more like he's a one-dimensional guy. Lewis writes the book in a way that indicates that he's an author that knows he's got nothing but has invested far too much time in research to try to turn back. The book becomes focused on the attempt to get Clark's newest technology-laden boat ready for an Atlantic crossing; hardly what I'm guessing Lewis set out to write.
   
   The crossing itself turns out to be a non-event and unfortunately the book does to. Don't despair though, read Moneyball or Liar's Poker or Blindside and you'll find that Michael Lewis can, and usually does, deliver the goods in spades.



5. This book could easily be transposed as an academic study in a scholarly journal or as a "how to" article in one of those business school reviews that cater to the deep anxieties of high-powered executives. The same material that Michael Lewis has collected could be used by an academic to formulate hypotheses, validate theories, and construct models of business behavior. In fact, a growing subset of management science deals with the phenomenon that Lewis describes in his narrative and that is known in the academic literature as serial entrepreneurship.
   
   In this respect, one could very well transform the portrait of Jim Clark into a diagram of the five abilities that a serial entrepreneur needs to cultivate:
   - the ability to repeatably recognize a market. Jim Clark is after markets worth billions of dollars, and strives to stay ahead of the curve by identifying business opportunities that Microsoft has not yet seized.
   - the ability to repeatably create a product or service. Jim Clark started with a chip that allowed computer to do 3D graphics, then moved on to pioneering the browser business with Netscape, then his attention turned to the healthcare market and then again to personal finance, markets for which he offered innovative business models.
   - the ability to repeatably motivate individuals/teams and build an entire organization to follow in his/her pursuit. People joined the bandwagon because Jim Clark offered them the promise to become incredibly rich, but also because his ventures were simply the place to be in the Silicon Valley.
   - the ability to delegate and surround themselves with talent that complements their own. Jim Clark is compared to a conceptual artist who comes up with the idea and let the other do all the actual work.
   - the ability to reinvent oneself. As the author notes, "other people grew old, he stayed new".
   
   Or the article could list the lessons that one learns from creating more than three successful ventures:
   - Don't Draw Business Plans. Jim Clark's notion of a business plan is to identify a trillion dollar-worth market, gather enough bright people and throw them at the problem so that something good will come out of it.
   - Don't Fall In Love With The Product. It doesn't really matter what the company is trying to sell, so long as it is identified as an Internet company. When Clark assembled a team of engineers to "fix the US health care system", as the team leader acknowledges, "no one knew a fucking thing about health care".
   - Stick To Your Guns. As an observer remarks, this is clearly a bad trait if you stick to your guns when you're clearly wrong, but Jim Clark and his team of bright engineers were "almost always right".
   - Leave When the Party Starts. Jim Clark becomes disinterested as soon as his ventures take off the ground, and very soon moves on to the next challenge.
   - It's OK to Fail. Jim Clark predicted that the future of information technology laid in interactive TV, then let others face disaster on the basis of his failed diagnosis. The same engineers who spent months designing an unmarketable device could then be drawn into his next venture.
   - Never Look Back. "I don't give a shit about the past", says Clark.
   - When to Stop. That is precisely the lesson that a serial entrepreneur like Jim Clark never learns.
   
   But of course Michael Lewis' book has very little in common with a business review article. Readers who find management books profoundly boring and uninteresting can still be attracted to this story, which evokes at times Moby Dick or The Great Gatsby. Michael Lewis is to the dot-com era what F. Scott Fitzgerald was to the Jazz Age. As the internet boom has now receded into the past, this book will remain as a monument to the follies and hopes of the internet bubble era.

5 comments about OCP Oracle9i Database: Fundamentals I Exam Guide.

1. This book blows. I read to book cover to cover and it misses alot of the key concepts covered on the exam. It dosen't go into enough detail in areas that need to be and goes into to much detail into subject such as utilities such as OEM. I don't even remember the book covering NLS topics. I suggest ordering a different prep book for this exam and buying STS software.



2. I used this Oracle Press book, the Sybex book, and the Self Test Software prep questions to pass the Oracle Fundamentals I exam.

   This book has received justifiable bad press. I bought it anyway, as I did not want to risk missing any material that might be presented in the "official" Oracle exam guide. I'm sure you'll buy it for the same reason.

   The Oracle Press book was difficult to read. The issues go beyond spelling errors and the many "Oracle 8I" references that should say "Oracle 9i". I can correct these errors myself. This book has serious editing issues that will impact your ability to understand the concepts presented. The author knows his stuff but the editor really dropped the ball. Oracle should take pity on certified hopefuls and rewrite it.

   However, not all is lost. You can avoid getting mired down in Oracle's presentation by printing the exam objectives from the Oracle web site and focus your studies around this outline. Consider buying the Sybex book as an added guide. Pull details from both books using your exam ojective outline. The only exam objective I found to be missing from the Oracle Press book was on NLS. NLS is covered in the Sybex book.

   Good luck!




3. I used this book to prepare for my Exam 1z0-031 but not as main reference. I used it to supplement the Sybex Study guide. It has some errors but I would say it is a decent book to use as preparation tool. I liked the practice exam questions. I did not have to buy any sotware for my practice exam questions. Those already in this book helped me.
   I give 3 stars and I will definitely recommend this book as supplement to the Sybex study guide if you are preparing for OCP exam Exam 1z0-031.



4. This book does not cover all the details for Fundamentals II. It is a good source for reference. The CD accompanied with the book has wrong answers for the questions. You may need to refer additional book(s), may be sybex one along with this one.



5. I read this book cover to cover..twice!!! The authors did a terrible job explaining the Architectural Components in depth. For any novice or beginner, how would you expect to get a grasp on storage structures(tablespaces,indexes,blocks) if you're getting a half ass instruction on what the main key components are? Their explaination of the buffer cache was no more that 10 lines of text. Nothing mentioned about the different structures within that cache. And the same goes for the other components.
   
   And as the other reviewer indicated, its terribly organized.The index in the book is a total joke.
   
   I think this is a great book for beginners who want to have a "general" understanding of Oracle,but if you want to conceptually understand the material and not blow $125, don't purchase this book.
   Get Sybex. Its does exactly opposite of what this book does. It Covers just about everthing you need to understand as a junior dba and test taker.

3 comments about Oracle Developer Forms Techniques.

1. This book is an excellent work describing the essential techniques for forms development. It has got valuable tricks of the trade involved in forms development and covers all new features of version 6 with live examples. I feel this book is a handy and expert reference to forms programmers and developers alike.



2. If you are looking for an advanced, to the point, and concise book, look no further! I am surprised that there has been only one review so far for this book. Oracle Forms is a failrly complex piece of tool. This book teaches you the 'right way' of using the software. It provides a ton of advanced tips like applying object oriented methods in forms, advanced GUI programming etc. A comprehensive index allows you to find areas of interest very quickly.

   Obviously, 226 pages of text could not cover a vast subject like Oracle Forms, however, this book gives enough pointers to lead you in the right direction. If you are a little experienced with Oracle Forms, buy this book to leap to the next level.




3. This book is badly written, and the organization could be considered bizarre or non-existant, depending on your point of view.

   That being said, if you really want to dig deeper into Oracle Forms, this book might help. The author shares a number of useful tricks, and the code is available at the publisher's site, so that is a help. In keeping with the bizarre tone, the code is in Word format, so if you don't have Word (I don't at work) you may need someone to reformat it for you. I had to rewrite all the examples anyway, for a decent layout. But, like I say, there are some good tricks to learn here, so if you have patience and are willing to dig, this book might be for you.

   The question is, tho: why are so many computer books written so badly? I guess it's because editors can't write software. Maybe I'll have to write one myself.

5 comments about Oracle9i DBA 101.

1. As an aspiring Oracle DBA (I am currently an Oracle PL/SQL programmer), I found the insights that this book provided invaluable. It is a great overview of what it takes to be an Oracle DBA and what your day-to-day tasks would likely be. I only wish that it covered certification in more detail, but it does go into a lot of detail in many other areas. I especially liked the installation details, and crisis/backup/restore management.
   I am curious as to what an experienced DBA would think of this book, but will have to wait until I am one.



2. As a programmer with experience in MS SQL Serer, this book appealed as a first introduction to Oracle. Unfortunately, too much space has been dedicated to complicated and unnecessary detail. For example, early chapters go to great detail of setting up the SQL Plus utility, interesting, but frequently I found myself skipping page after page that I didn't need as a beginner and there's no way I would remember. As a beginners' book, it's disappointing to find installation of the database pushed all the way back to chapter 7, and with that the chapter starts by saying that a full coverage of installations is beyond the scope of this book! If installing the database is not important for beginners, what is? Final word, this book isn't for beginners.



3. Rather tedious reading because of so much obvious padding to get the page count up to 500... I would estimate that there are 200 pages of real content here. There is a long explanation of what actions the trigger on a gun initiate, in order to be sure we understand what an Oracle "Trigger" is through a long analogy. This is a typical example of where a text is padded out to a paragraph to explain a concept that could have been done in a sentence. Authors should respect the reader's time and attention. Some of the coverage is very thin and the seams show on the revision for the 9i. We I reviewed the book and noted the highlighted passages, I realized how thin in content this actually was.

   Still a good first read for a new DBA, but the Wessler or Dawes or even Ault are better, more detailed and ultimately more useful.




4. There are many other better books out there for beginners. Just because this say's DBA 101, doesn't mean it is for beginners. reading this book was very difficult as I had NO knowledge of Oracle and it was very confusing. After reading other books, that are far better, then picking this one back up then I could understand, But why? getting knowledge from other books, you won't need this one. Lot's of definitions of oracle parameters, Not enough real examples and very logical in nature, not practical at all



5. Upon reading the reviews of this book, I can understand how some have mistaken what the book was truly meant for based on its title. The book should be titled more along the lines of "Your First Job Working As a DBA: 101" or "Your Job as an Oracle DBA from Jr. to Sr. Is This the Job for You ?", you get the point.
   
   In the section of the book titled "Getting Started", the authors explain how this book developed from a workshop called "DBA 101: A Refresher Course", and they had been DBA's since 1991. It was designed to help others who were DBA's. The 9i certification course consists of four exams and uses four books. Those books teach Oracle and prepare you for the certifications. They cover being an Oracle Certified Database Administrator (Jr. DBA) to an Oracle Certified Professional (Sr. DBA). You may be studying for the individual exams after you completed the course and have no experience or you may be attempting to apply for a job as a Jr. DBA, which are few and far between, you need to understand what is going to be expected of you. If you have a job as a Jr. DBA, you may need a refresher on what you need to work on in order to become a Sr. DBA. Whether your skill set is entry level or intermediate, this book does an excellent job of taking the important information from ALL FOUR books and consolidating it into one book that describes the job duties of a Jr. or Sr.DBA.
   
   This is NOT a study guide for the exams nor is it for anyone trying to learn Oracle. It answers the question of what a DBA really does and all of the duties you should be aware of that you need to gear up for if you are new and looking for a DBA position. Only real life experience can truly prepare you for what really goes on day to day in the life of a DBA. That's where this book comes in handy. This book is EXTREMELY useful only AFTER you have taken the Oracle course or have some experience. Use it to get a jumpstart as to what will be expected of you to know when you get that first job so you can get a head start and hopefully advance more quickly. It answers the questions that an aspiring DBA has and it provides you with a refresher course if you are a DBA so you can improve upon your skills.
   
   Take note that Oracle does make changes to its software so you want to do research on different procedures as this book was written in 2002. However, as for the topics it covers it is GREAT ! !

5 comments about Oracle Forms Developer's Handbook.

1. I am a beginner in Oracle Forms and Reports. I bought this book as a supplement to the class I am taking. The book talks about companion software, but there is no CD. It turned out to be downloadable SQL/PL*SQL scripts to be installed in my environment (You must have Oracle Developer client, not Windows environment, installed on your pc with permissions to create databases and tables, etc.) and run those scripts to setup the databases and tables. Very limited index doesn't help any more than my teacher, who puts up a Powerpoint presentation in the class and basically reads through each slide without much of an explanation for anything.

   I may return this book if I find a better book.




2. A great book to read and understand, but the support from author is bad. Still I would recommend this book.



3. A refence book without a good index becomes a novel you have to skim through. I had to do this on several occasions. What is sad is that the Table of Contents was pretty in depth (17 pages which is more than the index). When I need an answer I want a place in the book that will point me somewhere near the item I'm looking for. I was lucky because I had read the thing from cover to cover, so I had a general idea where to look. It covers the various form elements in advanced, but I could have gotten the same data from a help file.

   It would have been more useful with a better index. I found the downloadable sample files, but why not have a CD? Not recommended for the beginning Oracle user.




4. The book is full of typos and mistakes in the code examples. Even with that the book has been helpful in some situations but hard to use. It is written like a huge tutorial and if you don't get something in the previous section, the next section doesn't work. I just want to know how to do the code. I want specific examples that aren't dependent on other parts of the book. Why can't there be more books on this subject to choose from?



5. This is a tutorial, NOT a reference. As an experienced Oracle/IT professional, trying to learn Oracle Forms from this book has been extemely frustrating. The author is verbose rather than concise. Important information about a single topic may be spread across several sections making it difficult to get an answer to a specific question. As another reviewer stated, the index is weak. The author offers many warnings and tips that I eventually learned to test out for myself because, in a lot of cases, were just plain not true. There are tutorials on OOP, SQL, and PL/SQL that are tedious if you already have that background. I'd reccomend this book only for someone with little Oracle background who has a lot of time and patience.

No comments about OCP Oracle Database 11g: Administration II Exam Guide (Exam 1Z0-053) (Osborne Oracle Press).

4 comments about OCA Oracle Application Server 10g Administrator Exam Guide (Exam 1Z0-311) (Osborne Oracle Press Series).

1. Managing a big database system like Oracle is not a trivial matter. The software is so complex, with many settings and fittings that can dramatically affect performance. This book is not on things like programming Oracle using SQL or any of the other big application areas. It is on the more mundane, and probably more important things like:
   
   Installation
   Managing the Application Server
   Managing the Internet Directory
   Managing the HTTP Server
   SSL and OracleAS Security
   The OracleAS Portal
   J2EE Applications OracleAS Web Cache
   
   The book is intended as a comprehensive preparation guide for the Oracle Application Server 10g Administrator Certified Associate (OCA) exam. Beyond that, this is a good reference book on how to set up and manage an Oracle 10g database.
   
   The book is supplied with a trial exam on CD-ROM that also provides the answers and detailed explanations. With registration on-line, an additional exam is available.



2. A very confusing book. It actually describes the Exam 1Z1-311 and not 1Z0-311 as it is stated here on Amazon.com. The 1Z1-311 exam is a beta exam and not available at Oracle any more.
   Besides that the book consists of a lot of copy/paste sentences from Oracle documentation set. I dropped the book and started to read the documentation set instead.



3. The author demonstrated lack of understanding of the topics covered, and no hands-on experience.



4. The book is inadequate as a means to prepare for the OCA exam.