3 comments about Information-Statistical Data Mining: Warehouse Integration with Examples of Oracle Basics (The Springer International Series in Engineering and Computer Science).

1. No matter one is a beginner or an expert in the field of data mining,"Information-Statistical Data Mining: Warehouse Integration with Examples of Oracle Basics" is really a great hand book. The book is written in plain English to explain the terminologies and the concept of patterns for data mining --- making it easier for readers to understand the basic and advanced data mining concepts. Also, it shows clearly how data mining theories are realized in software implementation, how the implementation is applied to a variety of data sets in different disciplines, and how one can gain knowledge from the valuable information obtained from the process of data mining. Furthermore, it also discussed the way to interpret and to
   evaluate the quality of information resulting from the process of data mining. I particularly like the real world case study examples that help me to understand the data mining principles discussed in the book, and to draw me in further into the field. This book is well organized. I strongly recommend the book!



2. As storage technologies continue to improve and lessen in cost, data mining is becoming an increasingly important activity for all types of enterprises and industries. I have read and reviewed many books in this field, but none have presented the key concepts as well as new research together with examples for their proper use as this book. I highly recommend this book for anyone and everyone interested in this field.



3. Probability dominates our dicision making. The weak point of Eintein's Relativity is in probability, which is very important in Quantum Mechanics. Through this book, I have learned Information Theory, Bayesian Network, and more. All these are vital for my advance study. In other words this book bring me into a new horizon.

5 comments about Oracle8i Certified Professional DBA Upgrade Exam Guide.

1. The book can be good for those who don't have Oracle ILT (Instructor-Lead Training) or TBT (Technology-Based Training) material (as in my case).
   There are too many errors in this book and if you don't pay good attention, you won't probably be able to notice them. You can find errors in the topics and especially in the exercises. The wrong answers (the book as well as the CD) always misleaded me. They often contradicted the discussed topic. I had to always double-check on my database or in Oracle documentation and other sources.
   I e-mailed the author about the errors and he answered me that the fixes are going to be published ... but it was not the case.
   The book lacks explanation on temporary LOB (large objects), and the main features of Oracle Universal Installer (as the Web enabled installations feature). Also Materialized View Logs don't exist !!!! In the 8i upgrade exam I had a few questions on these two topics.

   I passed the exam (75%) but what I can advice you (if you don't have ILT or TBT) is to combine all of these in your preparations:

   - Oracle8i Certified Professional DBA Certification Exam Guide (By: Jason Couchman) (this book)
   - ExamCram Oracle8 to 8i Upgrade (By: Robert G. Freeman, Charles A. Pack)
   - Oracle8i Upgrade CramSession PDF document ...BR>- Implement on an Oracle 8i database

   All of the above are complementary. Trust me on this.

   One last thing: it's too unfortunate that Oracle OCP team (or whoever is responsible for this at Oracle Education) didn't check this book roughly. It's all about quality folks, and not quantity!




2. I am really surprised with such a low overall rating for this book. It definitely has errata, but overall presentation, fluid style makes it very easy to read even for difficult topics (such as composite partitioning, dimensioning - especially if you are not using it). I found it very helpful, and there was nothing in the exam that was not covered in the book. The examcram book along with Oracle Documentation (and, of course, hands on experience) you will definitely be able to pass exam, and your Oracle8i knowledge will improve. It is really amazing to find all the new features which exist in Oracle8i (and lot more in Oracle9i), which makes database administration so much more simpler. Go Oracle!



3. This book is all I used to study for the OCP upgrade exam and even though I passed first time round, I found the practice questions and test exams to be a poor preparation for the real thing. Detail in the book was but barely enough to pass.



4. If you are just starting to study for your Oracle8 to Oracle8i upgrade certification, don't start with this book. There are
   just too many technical mistakes. For example, the book always
   seems to mix up DBMS_OLAP and DBMS_SUMMARY. These are technical mistakes, not just typos. Don't get me wrong there are plenty of typos also. This would not be so bad if errata were available. None was found at the designated web page specified in the book. It is nice to know that Oracle Press has not changed its way. Similar comments are being made about the book that is used to upgrade from Oracle8i to Oracle9i. My recommendation is to use the exams provided by the "Self Test Software" company. Not only are the test questions good but they will also respond to issues
   that you may have with the question or answer. Oh, I don't have any financial interest in the "Self Test Software" company.



5. What a disappointment. I'm taking the test tomorrow, and I fear for my grade. Having worked with Oracle8i since its release, I was just looking for a quick read to brush up on the breadth of topics in the exam, and get reaquainted with the exam style for the Oracle tests. Boy I sure started with the wrong book. The amount of technical errors are astounding, particularly in the exam questions! In addition, the exam questions are poorly written and do not appear to have any relation to the style I will expect on the test. Wish me luck, and steer away from this title.

5 comments about Essential Oracle8i Data Warehousing: Designing, Building, and Managing Oracle Data Warehouses.

1. I am a veteran Oracle DW designer and tuning specialist. This is a great book - very easy to read, technically accurate, and comprehensive (an unusual combination!). I can say from experience that the emphasis is in the right places. The Oracle manuals tell you how to do things - this tells you what to do and why. I highly recommend it for any Oracle DBA involved in building a data warehouse.



2. This book has everything: a brief, high-level, overview of oracle "concepts" like background processes, sga, init parameters, etc. and, ultimately, as its name implies, a good, solid overview of 8i features, tools, and enhancements to make designing, loading, monitoring, and querying large Oracle databases (I think the term "data warehouse" is something of a misnomer) almost, well, FUN. I highly recommend it over Oracle's own, fragmented, documentation and immediately proceeded to partition my large, date-stamped, tables. Mr. Dodge, et al, have raised the bar for successful database projects. Kudos all around.



3. Uses clear examples to demonstrate the best techniques for designing, building and administering efficient data warehouse solutions using Oracle. This book will give you the information you need to make your data warehouse successful. I wish I could give it more than 5 stars.



4. The heart of data warehousing is the database - Oracle, despite the bugs, is one of the most practical databases for large data repositories.

   I have designed and installed Oracle data warehouses on Unix (and lately Linux) since the early nineties. The secret to a fulfilling relationship with an Oracle database set-up is knowing which stable Oracle release to use and the suitability with the operating platform.

   Essential Oracle 8i Data Warehousing is focused on giving readers an objective understanding of using Oracle for implementing data warehousing repositories.

   This book is better suited to technical users, who already have some understanding of Oracle, about to embark on the data warehousing process. This is not a book that is heavy on the side of data warehousing design nor dimensional modeling. There are other books that serve these subject areas well.

   Please let me know if you have found this review helpful.




5. I have a ton of Oracle DW books and this one is still the gold standard for real world administration of large Oracle data warehouses. The others just plain suck because they lack details or have tons of errors. This along with Bert Scalzo's short DW book for Oracle and the older Oracle 8i Data Warehouse book by Oracle Press written by M. Corey and Abbey are still the best ones on the market.

No comments about Flexfields for Oracle E-Business Suite.

1 comments about Zeroes and Ones: Digital Women and the New Technoculture.

1. The label of "cyber-feminist" should not give readers the illusion of Plant's
   ability to mobilize women readers.
   She affirms the role of women as the pursuers of technology,
   as being part of the machine.
   Her words become as mysterious as the ghost in the machine
   because they are only a description of where we are in these times,
   and I was left without a sense of direction.
   Her throws to Ada Lovelace were numbing at some point,
   and I wondered if there were other women we could also look at.
   Possibly specific Asian women would have been a relief to hear about
   instead of her tendency to speak generally about women
   in Japanese and Taiwanese business slowly taking control.

   Her saving grace was her beautiful analogies of technology with textiles
   and of binary language with the roles of women and men.

No comments about Oracle8i and Unix Performance Tuning.

No comments about OCA: Oracle Database 11g Administrator Certified Associate Study Guide: (Exams1Z0-051 and 1Z0-052).

4 comments about The Quantum Dot: A Journey into the Future of Microelectronics.

1. Turton has done a wonderful job descibing the technicalities of today's computer/electronic technology. His descriptions allow the lay-person to understand the current technology and to understand where the future is taking us - probably to the Quantum Dot - and other devices. I highly reccomend it for anyone interested in the nanotechnology field as a primer



2. This book gives sound, complete and comprehensible explanations for a number of solid state devices (pn diodes, FET and bipolar transistors, laser diodes, superconductors, Josephson junctions, etc). This book contains the best (most comprehensible) explanation I have ever read on the theoretical operation of bipolar transistors.



3. This book consists of two parts (its not formally laid out that way, it just naturally organizes into two parts). The first part is a qualitative introduction to integrated semiconductor electronics (with emphasis on transistor junctions). The second part focuses on solid state quantum physics with emphasis on optical as well as electrical properties. There is also a smattering of material on super conducting materials and some basic material about how a digital computer works. The author's intended audience is the high school student or first-year college student who wants to pursue a degree in the sciences. An alternate audience is the informed layman who wants to be up to date at a qualitative level with recent advances in electronics and future directions in research and development.

   I believe the book is well written for the intended audience. Turner has an easy-to-read style, and he manages to explain things (generally) in a technically accurate way without the use of mathematics. Without the mathematical details this book is not what you'd expect in a design reference - and that's not what it's intended for. But it is an excellent book to read in advance of a rigorous quantitative class on the subject. I think it's much easier to understand physical phenomena in mathematical detail if one first obtains a qualitative "feel" for what's going on.

   Turner opens his book with two short chapters on matter and the origin of conductivity. He spends the next few chapters describing p-n junctions, how they are used to make transistors, and issues that limit their size and speed. Along the way he shows how transistors are used in computers both in the fabrication of basic logic elements, and also in the venerable "flip-flop" memory cell. His descriptions are clear and concise, making liberal use of figures and diagrams so that the concepts can be grasped with no particular pre-existing skills in physics or electronics.

   The explanation of present semiconductor physics sets the stage for later discussions about the motivation for semiconductor devices at the quantum level. He does a good job of illustrating the fact that quantum-dominated semiconductor devices will not simply be miniaturized versions of the devices populating current integrated circuits. The physics would not allow it. Rather, they will be unique devices that are designed and custom tailored using quantum theory from the ground up. The result will be new devices that have similar - though often dramatically different - operating characteristics, and that are orders of magnitude smaller than present devices, as well as faster.

   In illustrating the classical and quantum semiconductor circuits, Turner does a nice job of laying out the basic ideas behind these devices. In qualitative prose, he explains the exclusion principle, how it applies to fermions, and how the exclusion principle in conjunction with quantized energy states results in many of the phenomena that we observe in semiconductor devices. Turner's description of the optical properties of semiconductors flows naturally from earlier discussions. He describes the basic ideas behind a laser, though in this regard I found the descriptions somewhat lacking. Other interesting groundwork is provided in his descriptions of tunneling and Compton pairs (which are involved in super conducting).

   A nice feature is the glossary of terms, along with a nice list of further reading material and a good index. The book is also well illustrated throughout, with figures that add considerably to one's level of understanding. I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in a qualitative introduction to solid-state physics, electronics, or semiconductor optics. I found it enjoyable to read and rich in the sort of qualitative imagery and description that makes learning so much more enjoyable.




4. This book is a great refresher of concepts that are driving many of our modern semiconductor devices. It does not get into heavy equations or overly complicated scenarios.

1 comments about Easy Oracle Jumpstart: Oracle Database Management Concepts and Administration (Easy Oracle).

1. The author describes this book as his first and it clearly shows throughout. Everyone has to start somewhere, so I can cut some slack for the lack of polish in the work. But not for the identified team of 'experts' who assisted him and who should hide their heads in shame as having let him down so badly. A book on any technical subject with as much breadth and depth as Oracle clearly needs to be well thought out and planned. There is precious little evidence of either in this work. But on top of that - it is just plain painful to read.
   
   This is not an exaggeration - almost any page has something wrong with it - either grammatically, technically, graphically or any other way you care to look. It is downright torture to read this book.
   
   Worst of all - it is shameless in hyping the company the author works for and their other so-called consultant experts. Most chapters actually refer you to Google to find something written (usually very poorly) by someone connected to the book, the publisher, or the consultant house.
   
   I cannot over-emphasize that this book should be avoided. The only reason I have it is because (disappointingly to me) the community college where I am learning Oracle uses it. In my opinion the faculty needs to re-examine (better yet, try to learn from) this work for its value. It leaves this reader gagging; but then, let me tell you how I truly feel ...

4 comments about Developing Oracle Forms Applications.

1. I'm an old hand at Oracle Forms, having worked with it since version 1.3. When a friend recommended this book, I thought it would be another week wasted, glossing over the same old commands and explanations. I couldn't have been more wrong. Much to my suprise (and embarrassment) this book is chock-full-o'tid-bits. Even including a section (albeit brief) on how to integrate Developer Forms with other applications, like MS Word, and Excel. I do, however, have 2 complaints with the book: 1)The book was written with screens in Windows 3.11 instead of Win 95, this will do nothing but confuse the novice and 2)it is riddled with mistakes in the tutorials. My recommendations is to wait for a newer, cleaner release. Once it comes out, I believe you will be hard pressed to find a better tutorial to Developer Forms.



2. This was the only book I was able to found in bookstores specifically on Oracle Forms. It covers all the main features in a concise and clear manner. It serves as a good tutorial in writing simple forms projects. One thing the books doesn't tell the user is the flow logic works differently depending on the objects being called (program units, functions, triggers, buttons, alerts, menus, blocks and etc) from the traditional top down approach in conventional programming languages. The reader may find this a bit confusing initially when their form project isn't working exactly as might expected.



3. I like this book a lot, especially the running tutorials based on sample databases, but unfortunately I now need to use Developer/2000 2.0. I hope the author updates this book for the new version.



4. When I was new to Oracle Forms 2 years ago, this was the only book in the bookstore on Forms. I got it, but have used it only a half dozen times since then. As an experienced programmer, I need a reference book so I can look up, say, a trigger and what it means and under what conditions it fires. This book is unsuited for that kind of task, and so I have generally found this book not useful to me at all.