No comments about Creating the Computer: Government, Industry, and High Technology.

4 comments about Computer Wars:: The Fall of IBM and the Future of Global Technology.

1. This book details how the modern computer industry came into being. Who the players were, how they fought for domiance, who won, who lost, and why. The authors cleary delineate the pivotal points that shape today's competitive landscape. For instance when Intel and Microsoft stole the day from IBM.For anyone even casually interested in the computer industry, this is a fasinating and easy read



2. This book was in interesting book that went into the details. It clearly explaines the details of how IBM lost the war with the best technology in the world.



3. This is a book book, if you like the subject. The first 1/3 tells the story of the collapse of IBM, and the rest of the book goes into the buissness aspects of what went wrong and what to do in the future. Great if you like either buissness or computers in general.



4. Computer Wars remains the single best book for understanding the computer industry, both software and hardware. When people outside the industry ask why both Netscape and Microsoft have decided to lose a barrel of money by developing WWW browsers and giving them away, give them a copy of this book.

1 comments about Introduction to Oracle.

1. this is a good book

5 comments about Oracle8i Certified Professional DBO Certification Exam Guide (Book/CD-ROM package).

1. If you like being confused, buy this right away. But if you want clear information that will help you pass the DBO exam, look somewhere else. This book's design is illogical, jumping from topic to topic. And it contains a lot of mistakes. Bad news!



2. All other reviewers have complained about either being confused or unhappy with the content of this book. As in all other certification books that I have read, this book alone will not pass the test. However if you use this book as a guide for the testing material, which is what it is designed for , and use other materials (such as: DBA Handbook, Hands on experience, and Self-Test Software's exam simulations) you will pass the exam. I did. Book does have a few typos in it so I can't give it five stars but all in all it was what I needed to make sure I was prepared for the exam.



3. This book was great. You need the software and this book in order to pass the test. I recommend reading the book a couple of time to really understand Oracle. Remember Oracle recommends you have 6 month hands on experience before taking the test.



4. The editing in the book is absolutely horrible!

   I've read this book more than once and found numerous mistakes. It is not uncommon to find that the answers given to the practice questions are wrong. This isn't an interpretation either, they ARE wrong. In fact, the book sometimes even gives the wrong answer to a practice question and then goes on to explain WHY the answer they gave is wrong!

   The chapters must have originally been in a different order (rightfully so) but in the published version there are references to the old order. For instance: in chapter 8 or 9, there is a reference to learning more about a particular topic when the reader gets to chapter 5.

   I even found one example of a term mentioned in passing that was never mentioned or explained in the book prior. And I double-checked this against the electronic version of the book by doing a text search.

   It was confusing to me and I actually knew a little about Oracle to begin with. I shudder to think how confusing it would be to a beginner.




5. I used this book to pass the Oracle DBO certification exam. I felt that it was a good book and overall I have little ill to say about it. The examples are well written and do a good job of reinforcing what you read in the chapter. You read a little then do an example, then read some more, then add to the example and so on. You don't need any Administrative experience to use this book just a decent understanding of database logic. The only criticism I could offer is that the editor should have used arrows when content is being continued on a new line for reasons of page space so that readers will know and understand (beginners can have trouble with this). It's a good book for learning Oracle as a whole from the ground up and for this reason it's worth the money. It's not an overnight crash course (if that is what you are looking for).

No comments about Oracle Education Student Guide: Navigating Oracle Applications Release 11.

5 comments about Oracle DBA 7.3 to 8 Upgrade Exam Cram (Exam: 1Z0-010).

1. Excellent resource for preparing for the exam. Using this book as my main study guide and supplementing with other sources on the "hot" topics (partitioning, objects, RMAN, etc.), I was able to pass the test the first attempt. I will definitely be purchasing the upgrade to 8i book once it becomes available.



2. This was my main plank in attacking the upgrade exam. It proved to be very concise, covered all the topics (and partitioning has a strong emphasis in the exam itself) and has approximately 160 questions to help one prepare. Annoyingly, there are some minor errors, but these can prove useful in causing one to reread the chapter and establish the correct answers. Using this book proved that attending the Oracle training course is unnecessary and that with self study one can achieve OCP status. I would strongly recommend the purchase of this book, as a study guide and later as a good reference.



3. This book has some really strong parts such as: 1) organization of the book with excellent coverage of exam topics (short and informative), 2) review questions on the end of each chapter are very well prepared and even harder than the real ones. Usually this is not the case with exam preparation guides. 3) last chapter alone with 60 sample test questions is worth purchasing the book. Not only that questions are picked up and presented carefully, a big help are explanations of why the particular answer is correct or wrong. Great stuff!

   So why I didn't give the book five stars as other reviewers? While reading the book I found many (minor) typos in text, source code, questions, answers (most of them as consequence of misuse of COPY/PASTE or writing example of code on the fly) which I found annoying at least. There are some more serious mistakes like statements "Prefixed indexes are built on the same partition boundary as the table..." or "...you can not partition a bitmap index." I have a filling that author simply didn't re-read this book and technical reviewer was obviously not up to the task of proofreading Oracle syntax and technical details. (If you're interesting I can send you my own version of errata - I'm still waiting the errata from the author.)

   On the bright sight this is certainly the best study guide for upgrade exam on the market. Highly recommended! Btw. I passed the exam with 60 points (100%).




4. These are the GOOD stuffs : ONE PAGE CRAM SHEET -very helpful, PARTITION TABLES explanation -Excellent, RMAN & Other Oracle 8 new features - EXCELLENT Qestions at the end of chapters and 60 questions at the end - EXCELLENT

   This book was a supplement to my exam preparation and helped me to score 82%.

   These are the BAD stuffs : Oracle Objects and NET80 Enhancements explanations are not enough. You need to read more books for this.




5. I didn't actually write this exam (I've passed directly the Oracle8 track exams) but I bought this book because I needed a good comparison between Oracle7 and Oracle8. Even if there are some errors (I've found no book without ANY errors util now so I'm not lowering the number of stars only for this), the contents is very complete and well organized. Use it for the test or if you are an Oracle7 DBA who needs a book which covers well the Oracle8 new features.

No comments about Oracle SQL High-Performance Tuning oracle.

No comments about Sun Cluster Data Service for Oracle E-business Suite Guide for Solaris OS.

No comments about ORACLE RECOGNIZED AS LEADER IN EMBEDDED DATABASE MANAGEMENT.: An article from: Worldwide Databases.

5 comments about OCP: Oracle8i DBO Study Guide.

1. I passed iDBO exam using this book and Oracle DBO (not iDBO) study guide. Some experience with SQL queries is required. And also I did all examples and played a lot with Oracle for NT.
   That book does not have deep coverage of Oracle architecture (DBO study guide do it better), Backup and recovery (you have to play with it a lot) and SQL/DDL/DML (I migrated my SQL Server database to Oracle and tested it).



2. I used this book to study for the exam. It was helpful when it came to installing Oracle, other than that, the book was hard to follow because there were so many errors.
   Some of the screen shots from the exercises were incorrect.
   I would suggest learning SQL, this book does not cover this subject adequately enough for you to pass the test; 16 of my test questions were related to SQL.
   Overall, this is not a very good book, I'm surprised Sybex let this one leave the editing room!
   If there was a 0 star rating, I would have used it.



3. This book gives a general overview of what was present on the 1z0-411 exam. It is also an excellent resource for those who have not yet used Oracle, and wish to learn how to install it using Oracle Universal Installer. I used this in combination with Self Test Software's Practice Exam for 1z0-411 and passed on the first try. I only rated this book with 4 stars due to having the majority of the book describing the Universal Installer, and giving a broad overview of what was actually on the exam without many details. Good general book to understanding the basics of the Oracle 8i Database, and understanding what the different screens actually look like.



4. I've only read Chapter 1, but already I challenge Mr. Mortensen's misleading statements. "A flat-file database resembles a spreadsheet, because it is all contained in one 'page' or file." "dBASE, Access, and other personal computer databases are examples of flat-file databases." "Two of the most serious (disadvantages) involve redundant data and inconsistent data."
   The fact that all data is stored in one file does not constitute a flat-file database. And, at least with Access, redundant data is not encouraged. In my experience flat-files refer to the storage of data that can be displayed with any text editor. Poor design techniques are the cause of redundant and inconsistent data, not flat-file databases.
   My criticism is significant because this subject is included in the quiz at the end of the chapter.
   The discussion on data warehouses is also misleading. In the discussion about OLAP and OLTP, Mr. Mortensen describes a data mart as transactional. This is news to me. Data marts are OLAP models, either derived from data sources or generated from a data warehouse.
   With such a shaky foundation and if these issues are in the actual DBO exam, it is difficult to see how anyone could pass the exam by relying on the information in this book.
   On the other hand, Mr. Mortensen appears to know the Oracle jargon pretty well. At least in the first chapter...



5. This book covered the exam syllabus very well. I very much relied on this book and passed the OCP exam.
   The knowledge I gained from this book also enhanced my skills to administer our product's Oracle database.