4 comments about Oracle Development Unleashed (3rd Edition).

1. I've seen many books about Oracle, they generally talk about different features of Oracle. However, this book covers almost everything and it is even better than many Oracle Press books such as Oracle8i Beginner's Guide.



2. I've browsed many Oracle books and really couldn't find one I liked, until this one. I am a beginning Oracle developer, but an experienced DB2 and Informix developer. Although, I'm not done with all 54 chapters yet, I've found this to be a very informative book. It is very broad in it's scope, yet to gain a full understanding of PL/SQL you will need another book. Overall, I would recommend this book to developers and DBA's.



3. If you are just starting out with Oracle, then this is a good book. However, as someone who has been programming Oracle for 3 years, I found this book to be very shallow and unhelpful. The author touches a lot of topics, but does not go into a lot of detail on any of them. What really makes me angry is that the cover of the book explicitly states "Go beyond the fundamentals." I guess when they say "fundamentals" they mean booting up the server.



4. It covers a wide range of Oracle topics and products. However, it does not get into enough detail about important developer topics, like PL*SQL specifics and SQL syntax, devoting only a chapter or two to each. It could cover more if it did not devote so much room to administrator issues, such as chapters on "Managing Diskspace" and "Performance Tuning and Optimization". If a developer has to worry about those details, then he/she is wearing too many hats and should probably not be using Oracle to begin with since there are other databases better targeted to smaller shops. Perhaps the publisher should remove "development" from the title.

No comments about Professional Oracle 8i: Application Programming with Java, PL/SQL and XML (International Edition).

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.

No comments about oracle 8 dba handbook.

No comments about Oracle Tuning in der Praxis.

No comments about Major It Companies of the World.

No comments about IBM WebSphere and VisualAge for Java Database Integration with DB2, Oracle, and SQL Server (IBM Redbook).

No comments about CHI '97 Conference Proceedings: Human Factors in Computing Systems.

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No comments about Net Security: Your Digital Doberman : Sure-Fire Strategies for Wired Businesses.