2 comments about Oracle Enterprise Manager 101.

1. This is another great book from Oracle for the beginner to intermediate DBA. The authors do an excellent job of walking you through installation of the Oracle Management Server and then introduce you to everything that Enterprise Manager can do.

   I would recommend this book to any DBA wanting to utilize OMS and OEM to efficiently manage their environments.




2. It's the only book I could find on the subject and it was a disappointment. If I learned enough to make it worth the $, it was just barely.

   A large part of what is said is rehashing what is intuitive and there is very little insight beyond that.

   The 101 title leads you to believe that it is for beginners and I guess that is true for the most part, but a beginner will struggle with the installation instructions the book gives.

5 comments about Oracle 9i JDBC Programming.

1. I spent quite some time reading through the various books on Java programming and Oracle, and this book really stood out as being the best. It covers everything you need: SQL, PL/SQL, Java, JDBC, and J2EE components (EJB, servlets, and JSP). It even covers how to use JDeveloper. I highly recommend this book.



2. If you buy just one Oracle Java book, this is the one to buy!Just the tuning chapter is well worth the price.

   Also covers Java stored procedures, EJB programming, servlets and JSP. I liked the conciseness of the book.




3. I wish more books were written like this. Price did a nice job of balancing depth with usability as well as explaining JDBC standard features with Oracle JDBC specific extensions (and their performance characteristics). It was a very quick read yet I didn't feel slighted in any way. I can see referencing this text frequently as I occasionally require to tap into more Oracle specific features from within Java (JDBC) applications.



4. I've been programming with Java and Oracle for about 3 years now, and this book shines the light on things like best practices when using Java and Oracle together. This book is a must have if you are using Java and Oracle: kind of like the Thomas Kyte book "Expert-one-on-one" is now.

   This book teaches you not only how to do things, but _why_ you want to do things a certain way. Because of that, this book is streets ahead of anything else available on Java and Oracle - even the other Oracle Press Java books.

   This book even teaches you how to use JDeveloper to create Java programs.

   If you're a newby or an expert, this book will be useful when using Java and Oracle together.




5. Rarely one comes across a book so complete as this one. What I liked the most in the book was COMPLETENESS in its discussion. Must say that the author is very precise and consistent in his approach for all topics throughout the book. Just like Mr. Tom Kyte, (Does he need any introduction?), the author too does not hesitate in sharing his personal preferences on dos and don'ts and also shares his personal preferences on the books for advance readings. Advance Java Programmers might be little disappointed if they evaluate book from Java Programming perspective alone but the book is mainly related to JDBC programming for the Oracle Environment and he has covered much more than that for that matter.I must say that for quite sometime I was looking for a book of exactly this kind, and sure this has found a permanent place in my bookshelf now.A brilliant work by Jason Price, will look for more such books from him in future!

1 comments about Hands-On Oracle Database 10g Express Edition for Linux (Osborne Oracle Press).

1. If you try to Learn Oracle, this is the way to go. the book introduce you to basic Relational Database concepts also provide you with the Application Express Web Development.
   
   Learn and start with Oracle is a snap with the Book, the samples work great and the Book can be bought for your OS [ Linux or Windows ].
   
   For a while I feel intimidated for so many books on Oracle this surely is the book that will make you start working and administering your first Oracle Database. Medium and Expert users can use it as Freebie and Development Tool.

3 comments about Oracle Data Dictionary Pocket Reference.

1. It lists about everything. It gives the table or view name and the column name and type. For the most part, it gives a one sentence description for the table/view. That's the extent of the details.



2. "ORACLE Data Dictionary Pocket Reference" describes (most of) the ORACLE data dictionary views. This book sorts the DD views according to subjects e.g. "Replication". Normally for each view you will find a sentence about the contents of the view and the columns with datatype and not null constraints (if present). For some views you will see a little longer explanation.

   I am a big fan on O'Reilly books and I own at lot (50+) O'Reilly books. From my point of view this book is superfluous and it should not have been printed. This book does not provide any detailed information about the columns of the views. The semantics of the data in the views is not explained at all. There is no information how to join the DD views to get the result you need. At one place the book states that you can join V$PROCESS and V$SESSION to find some more information about a session but it does not say how to join those view (V$SESSION.paddr = V$PROCESS.addr).

   This book does not add any information that can not be found in the ORACLE "Reference" manual. It actually provides less information. Most of the information can be extracted from ORACLE itself (DICT table and SQL*PLUS describe on the view). The ORACLE documentation can be read online and is more detailed.

   I did not find any big error in this book. The form, printing and index are of the normal O'Reilly high quality. This is worth 3 stars from me. However I will probably not look into this book again.




3. 
   Great book to have handy at work. I never remember all the Dictionary view names. May consider others....

5 comments about Oracle Job Scheduling: Creating Robust Task Management with dbms_job and Oracle 10g dbms_scheduler (Oracle In-Focus series).

1. Managing jobs in Oracle 9i and below was a pretty straight forward process; start the job queue processes and submit a PL/SQL Block using dbms_job. If you wanted any level of detail you had to wrap the dbms_job functionality around a package and some other tables. Job scheduling was basic and it generally worked. Any complicated scheduling or interaction with the OS and you were out of luck and had to revert to cron.
   
   I'm not sure what I expected when I started reading Oracle Job Scheduling, by Dr. Tim Hall, a few days ago. I've got a decent handle on dbms_job and have used it extensively for all sorts of maintenance tasks. How different could job scheduling in 10g be? Believe me, it's different.
   
   Dr. Hall explains how the new dbms_scheduler packages works and the details of each call. In addition he explains in detail how the new INTERVAL type works and gives very through examples. Chapter 4 is by far the most valuable chapter as it explain four different methods to schedule dependant jobs. The examples in this chapter are an extension of Tims experience in the real-world implementing solutions. Later on, the book explains about how to monitor the new scheduler and how to view the job logs.
   
   I've got to admit I breezed over the sections on OEM and OS Scheduling. I don't use OEM and there's nothing I really need to know about cron.
   
   This book was a good read. Don't get me wrong, it's no A Dog Year: Twelve Months, Four Dogs and Me. It's a technical book through and through. I would definitely recommend it if you are planning on using the Oracle job scheduler to implement complex business schedules.
   
   Oh, and by about the third time I saw:
   -- ****************************************************
   -- Copyright 2005 by Rampant TechPress
   -- This script is free for non-commercial purposes
   -- with no warranties. Use at your own risk.
   --
   -- To license this script for a commercial purpose,
   (...)-- ****************************************************
   
   I was ready to barf.



2. Tim Hall is the brains behind http://www.oracle-base.com and has produced more tips and explanations over the years than most in the Oracle community.
   
   This book is his first and covers the small but really rather crucial area of scheduling systems administration tasks using the Oracle schedulers.
   
   The book does a good job of covering the capabilities of the scheduler and does come with some ready worked scripts. The combination of the two of these should ensure that by the time you have worked through the examples you are able to schedule your own tasks reliably and effectively.
   
   I was somewhat distracted by the cartoons that introduce each chapter and by the repeated printing of the same legal disclaimer at the top of each example script. In places two the writing style was clear but rather ponderous - reading more like a manual than an addition to the manual set.
   
   Overall then the book does what it sets out to do, but in places both the writing and , presumably, house style detracted from the content.



3. This book has pretty good examples of using the scheduler package. It dealt with the time-based scheduling very well. However, Oracle 10gR2 has event-based scheduling also which is a very powerful feature and which is what more people will be interested in. Hopefully, there will be a new revision to this book pretty soon incorporating event-based scheduling.



4. I bought this book after browsing the DBMS_SCHEDULER sections of the 10.2 manuals. I didn't find anything that wasn't already better explained in the manuals. A lot of DBMS_SCHEDULER functionality was missing (e.g. creating job chains).



5. In answer to some previous reviews, the book was written against 8i, 9i and 10gR1. The book was finished and with the publishers before the release of 10g Release 2, so it doesn't contain event based scheduling.
   
   The scheduler updates in 10gR2 are explained on my website.
   
   Cheers
   
   Tim...
   PS. I rated this post to match the current average rating, so as not to affect the overall rating of this product :)

5 comments about Oracle Database 10g New Features (Osborne ORACLE Press Series).

1. This is the first book on Oracle 10g New Features that was out from Oracle Press. It only gives a condensed overview of the topic, so for OCP exam preparation or for a deeper coverage of the new features you should rather turn to Sam R. Alapati's book. I would recommend Freeman's book as a supplement to Alapati as it covers some features which are not part of the OCP exam. It also contains some very useful comments by Jonatan Lewis.
   
   As usual for books like this the binding is so poor, that my copy started to fall apart after I read a few chapters.



2. Nice and useful DBA's book, skilled on Oracle 9i and starting with the upgrade on Oracle 10g.



3. Yes, this book gives you only an overview over the 10g new features. But that's enough for me to download the free official and detailed guide on the argument of my interest from otn.oracle.com
   Good for a quick reference.
   Recommended.



4. What I like most about this book is that it is ony 230 pages long and almost none of those pages are wasted. Too often, the authors of technical books such as this are pressured to write XXXX number of pages to justify exorbitant cost of a book. Such was clearly not the case with this book.
   
   Aside from being informative, I felt the author did a great job of providing an overview of the all the topics new in 10g. If you already have a strong knowledge of Oracle 9i, this book will provide the neccessary coverage to manage 10g.
   
   As usual, no single Oracle book will provide ALL the information on any single topic, but this book is as good as any I have read and it does in mere 230 pages.



5. This book provides a good overview of the changes in Oracle 10g. It does not drill down into detail, that is left for other publications, but is an easy starting point for a DBA to migrate from earlier versions of Oracle.
   The book is easy to read and the diagrams are clear and add to the text.

5 comments about Oracle in a Nutshell.

1. This book was very disappointing. It contains very few examples of anything. While it is useful (though cumbersome) to determine the syntax of Oracle commands, it provides no examples of how to practically use the commands. It gives me no help in determining what command, function, or package to use, no help in how to use it, only the syntax or declaration of it. I find it far more useful to use one of my other reference books or go to the web; at least there I typically find advice and examples on how to use the commands. The book is of very limited use!.



2. When I purchased Oracle in a Nutshell I thought I would need to buy another book for a quick reference to the data dictionary views but to my pleasant surprise these were included too.

   A great book but it's not for the weekend-warrior DBA. If you can create indexes, tables, tablespaces, users, instances and databases off the top of your head then you'll love this book. It saves having to wade through all the Oracle documentation to look for less frequently used syntax etc.

   Ben




3. Well , yes the so often chosen approach by technical book writers, of lets make it very large with lot's of STUFF, so it sells, which unfortunately most of the time does work. To get to the point, for a software developer, who actually has to produce a system or results outside of academia, this thing will get its best use as a fire starter if one has a fire place.
   First of all, it takes far too long to find anything, and once found the description looks often like a hieroglyphic abstraction instead of a short example, (very typical for folks who write books about a subject they do not comprehend them self.) My suggestion, if you are looking for a quick straight forward, and ineligible answer try (ORACLE the Complete Reference), written by the Vice President of Oracle.



4. I am an experienced developer who purchased this book as a quick reference because I don't always have time to hack through the Oracle documentation. The book has been quite useful and I've found it has everything I need, but it is often difficult to find things because of the way the book is organized.
   
   Specifically, what I find annoying is the lack of complete information all in one section. For example, the entry for TO_CHAR() for dates lists the syntax along with the input and optional mask parameter. The optional mask parameter is labeled dfmt which refers to a list of possible values in Appendix D. No where under the TO_CHAR() entry does it mention that the list of valid date formats is in Appendix D. If you have not used the book in a while, you will forget that the list is in Appendix D and spend the next ten minutes trying to figure out where the list is. FYI, I had to go all the way back to the first page of the chapter to find it. Could the author/editor not have included a small blurb next to the parameter like: (Appendix D)?
   Also the SQL*Loader section is a little hard to figure out for those of us who only use that tool every six months or so. It seems I do a lot of cross referencing when I use this book.
   
   All in all this book is accurate, complete, and quite handy. I am not certain how much improvement could be made in terms of expanding the details of each entry with out making the book much bigger, but I hope that some how the author will figure out a way. I look forward to seeing the 2nd edition.



5. This is a prime example of a book trying to be all things and falling to be anything at all.
   
   It is to big to be a quick ref and to small to be anything else.
   
   I had hope that by now there would be a 2 ed based on feedback from readers,but it seems that Oreily is content to leave it as it is.
   
   
   That is sad for us all but it also means that Oreilly has damaged its brand in my eyes.
   
   Here is what i Said on Oreillys site soon after I bought the work years ago.
   ---start--
   This book could use some improvement. Overall it is good but it fails to take into acccount that not all parts of oracle need to be included in a quick ref.
   
   In particular it tends to ignore the bread and butter of pro-cobol proc
   
   and odbc in favor of more trendy JDBC JSQL etc. This might be forgivable but to include very damn oracle package notwithstanding how likely they are to be usefull to an application programer is not. The book starts to look more like an oracle feature list for presales than a handbook to surive in the trenches. This makes the book far less usefull for me than I had hoped. I expect that I will keep looking for that handbook.
   --- END---
   In retrospect I think I was too kind, but I was hoping they would improve thier products. I had been an O'reilly fan and customer for years,and so I was hoping, as a customer, to push gently in the right direction.
   
   Well, in any case, O'reilly has left me before I left them. I may buy O'reilly again, but the persumtion of quality and utility is no longer in their favor-- where once I would buy sight unseen, now I must have proof of utility.
   
   I do not know what they are doing to the Nutshell series, but I do not like it.

5 comments about The Sql Guide to Oracle.

1. I have found this book the only useful book on using SQLPlus. In fact, it was the ONLY book on SQLPlus that I have found anywhere. It has exactly what I need. However, the book only covers Oracle 6.x, which is a bit outdated. Are there any plans for new editions of the title?



2. The book contains many examples, more then other SQL books that I have read. The book covers a lot of nested queries, sub-quries and co-related queries using EXISTS, ALL operators. It is a little out-dated but still serve my purpose which is to become proficient in SQL. I would buy a second edition if one exists for Oracle 7 or 8.



3. It is bit of old book but it is best for bingers who need jump start for SQL programming and do not care about new oracle features. It starts from very basics but then it takes you to pretty high level.



4. I had the original, generic SQL version of this book (now out-of-print) and gave it to another developer. I bought this SQL for Oracle edition to replace it.

   When I first got this, I had NO idea how to write even the simplest SQL statement (well, maybe the easiest). But thanks to this book -- and only this book -- I'm a real whiz at it now and did all of my company's database programming for years. How many times can you learn an entire computer language with just ONE BOOK?!?

   The author over-achieves something that most others fail at: he teaches all aspects of the language through sensible examples and straightforward explanations.

   The book is an invaluable resource for beginners through to advanced developers. There is no fluff anywhere in the book...just very efficient examples and explanations. So if you are used to Dummies guides or 21-day guides, you might find this book a bit terse. But I still think it is a fantastic choice for beginners.

   In all, I cannot recommend any computer book more highly than this one.




5. This is the third time I've bought this book. I have used it since I first found it over 10 years ago to teach new DBA's, programmers, and users the basics of SQL as well as advanced topics. While the SQL standard hasn't changed that much since the book was written, I do wish there was an updated version. By the way, in addition to the three copies I've purchased for myself (they end up disappearing), I've had every employer I've ever worked for buy copies. The material is clear and easy to learn and worth the money.

5 comments about Oracle Backup & Recovery 101.

1. I would rate this book 5 stars for the material. But, gosh, is there any Oracle book without mistakes? When would authors and publishes care enough to eliminate them, or at least minimise them? Even errata contains only about 50% of necessary corrections - after 6 months from being published.
   What is the value of instructions if you can't follow them?
   If you know how to correct them by yourself, then you can buy this book, otherwise it would be another pain.



2. Oracle backup and recovery can be very complex. The standard Oracle documentation is hard to follow and missing examples and scenarios. I've read this book cover to cover, and the authors have done an excellent job at capturing the information you need to know to backup and recover your Oracle database. The Linux discussions are applicable to any Unix platform as well. This book is a great reference to have before disaster strikes.



3. This book has almost one error per page which is much too high for a technical book. It is unfortunate that the authors did not put in the effort to proof read the book and to check their solutions. It is interesting to note that the solutions on the web site are not consistent with the exercises in the book.

   I wonder how the authors authors keep their real jobs if their attention to detail is the same as demonstrated in this book.




4. I thought this book was great! I really enjoyed the material and the analogies. I really get Oracle backup & recovery now. Forget about the typo's -- the material is what counts.



5. I think that this book is excellent. Backup and recovery can be hard to understand at times, especially for those who are new to it. It is a great book that is all hands on, and that's the way you learn B/R, not just by reading. If you have a little bit of knowledge of B/R then this book will really help you a lot. I know people complained about the typos, but that is not that big of an issue, plus they already have an errata out for it. The only downside I guess is that everything is done using Oracle 8i and some commands are different. But if you combine this book with the Oracle9i Backup and Recovery documentation then you're all set! I think it explains things very well and makes you do things so you can see what exactly is going on. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who has a little knowledge of Oracle B/R but would like to put that knowledge into practice. I want to give it 4.5 stars because of the minor typos and using 8i, but can't :) BUY THE BOOK!
   Good Luck!!

5 comments about Oracle Privacy Security Auditing: Includes Federal Law Compliance with HIPAA, Sarbanes Oxley & The Gramm Leach Bliley Act GLB (Oracle In-Focus series).

1. This remarkable book covers how to use Oracle 9i security and auditing facilities to achieve compliance with three major laws. While the book emphasizes HIPAA, it also addresses, either directly or indirectly, privacy security and auditing with respect to the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (Subtitle A: Disclosure of Nonpublic Personal Information 15 U.S.C. 6801-6810 and Subtitle B: Fraudulent Access to Financial Information 15 U.S.C. 6821-6827), HIPAA requirements for protecting data and enforcing security and privacy, and Sarbanes-Oxley Act Section 404 requirements related to integration of transactional systems, logs and auditing trails, and data security.

   Structure of this book is in three sections:

   Section I gives an introductions to HIPAA, Oracle security and Oracle auditing. Among the topics covered are grant, role-based, and profile based security, as well as virtual private databases (row-level security, fine-grained access control), and application server security.

   Section II goes deeper into general Oracle security, covering relational grant security as it relates specifically to HIPAA (but can be also used for Gramm-Leach-Bliley and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance because the requirements are similar regarding these mechanisms and techniques). Also covered are encryption and network security.

   Section III deals with auditing using Oracle facilities, tables, DDL and DML, and covers the spectrum from grants auditing to fine-grained audits. Again, the focus is on HIPAA requirements (Chapter 11, for example, contains the following topics: Auditing select access as per the HIPAA mandated auditing of Patient Health Information, and Combining FGA and Flashback queries to answer the most important question in addition to who saw the data, what they saw.) This section ends with HIPAA security and auditing checklists, which can be also applied to Sarbanes-Oxley and Gramm-Leach-Bliley security and auditing.

   This book is an outstanding addition to bodies of knowledge spanning three disciplines - internal auditing, DBA, and IT security & privacy. A copy should be provided to managers and subject matter experts in each of those domains.




2. The title of this book is quite misleading. The title should stop with HIPAA. HIPAA is the sole focus; there is no mention of SO or GLB. True, the overall goals of SO and GLB are similar to those of HIPAA (control, accountability, confidentiality) but I would expect a book that has SO and GLB in the title to mention those laws and perhaps (as I was hoping) provide some specific insights. If you want to learn something about HIPAA, this is the book. If you want to learn something about SO or GLB, you have to learn it elsewhere and then apply the legalistic knowledge into this book on Oracle.
   
   The second gripe is with the index. Personally, I don't have the time to read a book cover-to-cover. I need a competent index to be able to look up specifics. This index is woefully short (4 large type pages). Further, I sincerely believe the index is for some other version of the book or other book entirely. The page references do not match the pages. Hence index is useless.
   
   I was in the process of returning this book (first time I would have done so) when I came over to the reviews and started reading them. My gripes are legitimate but I have decided to keep the book for its security aspects rather than its integration of HIPAA, SO or GLB requirements into Oracle security. After all, the Oracle Security Handbook (Theriault and Newman) is out of date.



3. I bought this book for understanding how to handle compliance in Oracle. No where in the book can you find details about HIPAA, SOX or GLBA complaince!!!! It was totally, completely, worthless for me!



4. I primarily purchased this book for help on Virtual Private Database (VPD) and Row Level Security (RLS). We use these features at work and need to expand on them. Something I did like about this book is that it is well written and covers many subject areas that are spread out over many different books in Oracle's documentation. The examples are not much more helpful than Oracle's and that is an area that could be improved on the second edition.
   
   The book is 672 pages and if it was formatted a little differently it would probably be closer to 300. The font is large and the pages are narrow.



5. Excellent book for general security information with Oracle (VPDs, Roles, Encryption and the rest)
   As an another review pointed out, the book is very light on SOX material and focuses instead on the HealthCare sector.
   If that's what you want..by all means, buy the book...A.Nanda is one of the very best DBAs out there and knows his material inside and out...
   If you need SOX and/or GLB, look elsewhere...