No comments about The Future of Software.

No comments about Information Industry Directory 2000 Supplement (Information Industry Directory).

No comments about Behind the Silicon Curtain: The Seduction of Work in a Lonely Era.

No comments about Oracle 7: A User's and Developer's Guide Including Release 7.1.

No comments about LINUX NETWORX OFFERS ORACLE-CERTIFIED CLUSTERS.(Eclipse Database Cluster)(Product Announcement): An article from: EDP Weekly's IT Monitor.

No comments about Keeping the U.S. Computer and Communications Industry Competitive: Convergence of Computing, Communications, and Entertainment.

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

5 comments about Oracle8 on Windows NT.

1. There is nothing here that you can't find in the Oracle for NT installation instructions.



2. Without a doubt, this book takes the award for worst Oracle book in print. Not a shread of substance. The only volume on Oracle in my library to make it to the trash can (thought about donating it, but I was afraid someone else might read it!).



3. If you need to have screens from Enterprise Manager explained to you, or need to figure out how to use wizards, you might find this useful as a beginner book. Had the book been labelled as a beginner book, as it should have, as opposed to the intermediate status that it has, I would not have purchased it.

   I bought it, and I'm not happy about it, nor about having to write this terrible review of it.

   Why isn't there a 0 star rating available?




4. I was looking for a reference that would provide me an overview of Oracle concepts from about 20,000 feet above sea level. This book provided me that. However, as a professional, I am not into Oracle details sufficiently to comment on the book's technical merits from a pedagogical perspective. I was, however, bitterly annoyed to have paid good money for a book that one must conclude is very poorly edited. Indeed, it is so amateurish in certain areas that I am certain the book was not proof read by someone who uses English as their primary means of communication. The text is loaded with misspellings, poor grammar and punctuation errors/oversights. Frankly, I find this unacceptable and probably will never acquire a book again from this publisher. Had the reference not provided me what I was looking for technically, I would have rated it lower. This leads me to suggest that the Amazon.com ratings of technical reference material needs to have at least two categories, that is, (a) technical content and (b) writing proficiency. With regard to the latter, this book is a null set!



5. This book is now dated but I enjoyed being shown how to do things the graphical way rather than being expected to type in SQL commands.

   I didn't spot any spelling or grammar mistakes, it all looked to be correctly spelt English to me. I can only assume that the previous reviewer didn't realise that Americans often don't spell words according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

No comments about CramSession's Oracle 8 Performance Tuning : Certification Study Guide.

3 comments about Oracle8 Certified Professional DBA Practice Exams.

1. Very well put together. It looks alot like the Oracle8 Certified Professional DBA Exam Guide and works well as a supplement to it. The book is divided into 2 sections, an Exam section and a Terms and Concepts section. Each exam section has 2 tests (i.e. the database administration has Test1 of 60 questions and Test2 of 60 questions). The questions are similar to those in the DBA Exam guide, and others, but different in content. I've gone over the questions in the DBA Exam Guide to where in alot of cases I've memorized the answers. This gives you a new set of questions to work with to identify weaknesses after you've gone over the DBA Exam guide. After taking some of the tests, the Oracle Press books seem to be the way to go. This one's no different.



2. I bought this book for one reason -- to practice taking OCP exams. As for this, I can not say this book suceeded. First, the practice exam questions are much different than the real exam questions. The author of this book seems more hung up on tricking you with distracters than simulating the level of dificulty of the real exam questions. For example, all of this book's questions are muliple choice. On my OCP exams, there were a few fill in the blank, and sometimes one matching. Selecting a V$ view or init.ora parameter name from a list is totally different than typing it in from scratch.

   Second, several questions in the book have the incorrect answers! I have found on every exam in this book at least two incorrect answers. The worst part is the author's explaination of the answer proves that it is wrong!

   Third, the CDROM's electronic test's are filled with errors. Same problem with incorrect answers(and explainations), but the software won't let you select mulitple answers even when the question tells you to!

   The only real worthy parts to the book are the Introduction (very well done) and the Exam Terms and Concepts section (however, this section is only a rapid review of complex topics -- good for a warm-up prior to taking the actual exam).

   If you are looking for very good practice exams, you will not go wrong with Self-Test Software's practice tests. They are very pricy, but very accurate!




3. The interactive Exam-Based question on CD-ROM was very useful. This book cover all five OCP DBA exams, which make exam taker's jobs easier then ever... Best of all, the author also included Oracle 8i upgrade exam with this amazing edition. Check it out, you won't regret buying this book.