No comments about Oracle Datenbankadministration mit SQL-Scripten.

No comments about CramSession's Oracle 8.0 SQL-PL/SQL : Certification Study Guide.

5 comments about Oracle8i Web Development.

1. Not very impressed with this book, it has little to do with Oracle 8i and Oracle's Java Vision.

   With Web Development I was hoping for some database interaction, as the title states "Oracle 8i Web Development"

   Where is the Java coverage: JDBC SQLJ JSP Servlets BC4j

   This book is rubbish. I would not waste my money.

   It has nothing to do with 8i, and everything to do with basic OAS.

   Very frustrating!




2. Book Review for: Oracle8i Web Development written by Bradley D. Brown, published by McGraw-Hill companies, Inc. copyright 2000

   Sequels are sometimes a mere shadow of the original. Could this be true of Brad's second book, Oracle8i Web Development?

   The original book, Oracle Application Server Web Toolkit Reference, was written in early 1998 by Bradley, Richard J. Niemiec and Joseph C. Trezzo of TUSC and is an incredible value with its vast quantity of Web information. So how does Brad's new book stack up to the first?

   It took me several weeks to review Brad's first book due to the enormous amount of material and this one took longer for the same reason. This book took has an incredible amount of web development information, in fact I refer to it as the A to Z , numbers included, Oracle Web Development Manual.

   But the question is, did I like it and would I recommend it? The answer... absolutely. Because it covers just about everything you would need to know about developing an Oracle based web site. It starts with an well-itemized list of contents, which is 26 pages long, followed by 1050 pages of web development content as listed below.

   Hardware and OS considerations, specifications and installation of the web server, OAS configuration, web database, HTTP Listeners and Oracle8i built-ins are some of the topics discussed in the early chapters. Tuning, uptime and web server version differences are also covered to help educate the reader. There are several chapters on development tools and their differences, including many examples. The tools and languages covered at length are HTML, JAVA, XML, PL/SQL,PERL, cartridges, and Oracle Designer.

   Designing the site is thoroughly addressed, including discussions for a commerce server. Something I had not thought about until I read this, then realized "of course, makes a lot of sense to have a commerce server." The book goes on to describe utilities and offers troubleshooting tips , debugging code and security; an extremely important topic when you deal with your customer's information, like credit card processing. Need I say more, other than you are not getting a book with boring narrative, but one filled with page after page of code examples, topic tips, screen shots examples, diagrams and flow charts. In fact when I went back and looked at the layout of the book I realized it has an extremely good page layout and use of white space. In other words the layout appears to be "designed" rather than happenstance where many writers place diagrams and charts near pertinent text. It is not an easy task to keep the interest of a reader in a highly technical book, but my hat's off to Brad's accomplishment in doing so.

   The book concludes with a 38 page index and a 26 page appendix of great web sites. When I contacted Brad about the extremely helpful web sites to find his source he told me he had to compile the list. When you see the list you will know that that alone took a while to research not to mention that list is only the tip of the ice berg of the wealth of information, or should I say tip of the "gold" berg.

   If Brad intended to establish himself as a web authority, he has done it and this book demonstrates just that. What a nice gift to the community of web developers Brad has given us by sharing his wealth of knowledge on the subject. Thanks Brad!




3. The first thing I noticed when I got this book was the Oracle Application Server (OAS) chapters. The next thing was that the content was pulled almost word-for-word from the OAS documentation. I'm not that familiar with the other products covered in this book, but if this is how the rest of the book was written, save your money. If you have the products, you already have this book. It's just not all in one place. For example, compare the discussion of "Multiple Instances and Threads in Cartridges" on p. 142 of this book with p. 2-17 the OAS 4.0.7 Introduction to Applications book. Not only are the figures identical, but the text is almost a perfect match.



4. The first thing I noticed when I got this book was the Oracle Application Server (OAS) chapters. The next thing was that the content was pulled almost word-for-word from the OAS documentation. I'm not that familiar with the other products covered in this book, but if this is how the rest of the book was written, save your money. If you have the products, you already have this book. It's just not all in one place. For example, compare the discussion of "Multiple Instances and Threads in Cartridges" on p. 142 of this book with p. 2-17 the OAS 4.0.7 Introduction to Applications book. Not only are the figures identical, but the text is almost a perfect match.



5. Finally this is like Complete reference if you are an Oracle DBA. If you are planning on installating or already have I would strongly recommend to purchase this book. You must have some HTML, Java, XML experience to understand examples in this book. Extremely good coverage of OAS (oracle application server) from installation to configuration. The author gave detailed tips and techniques on writing PL/SQL stored procedures that dynamically generate HTML web pages using Oracle database, and every new feature in OAS PL/SQL cartridge is covered. More installation information on WebDB server is available on OTN (Oracle technology network).

5 comments about High Performance Oracle8 Object-Oriented Design: Your Complete Guide to Creating Fast, Efficient Database Systems.

1. The introduction of this book claims that "valuable information can be found here" (sample case study, chapter 8). What I found is a bunch of incorrect sample codes everywhere in the book. I expected this book will address how well Oracle8 support ORDBMS. Instead it makes me wonder if the wonderful object oriented design concept presented in the book can be implemented in Oracle8 or not. Not a well edited book.



2. Mr. Anstey has written a fantastic book. He compares and contrasts traditional RDBMS modeling to OBJECT modeling. This book should be in your library if you can even spell "ORACLE"!

   He also teaches the reader how to implement Objects using Oracle8 and all of its new features. I particularly enjoyed Chapter 4 that discussed modeling for Oracle's data types.

   The book is loaded with information tying the two methods together. I am a visual learner, and Mr. Anstey has at least 5 or 6 very detailed drawings to help the user "SEE" and understand what he is discussing.

   He even has one chapter devoted to tools used to design an Object database. Another powerful chapter is on Data Warehouses. He discusses bitmapped indexes, index-organized tables,the Partition Option, and Star Queries. Mr. Anstey covers all bases, even distributed systems using REPLICATION,the SQL3 Standard, planning your Oracle8 databases to take advantage of the Object features, and the future trends of the Object technology.

   All in all, a WONDERFUL book written by an author with a great technical sense of both technologies. Both thumbs up Mr. Anstey!




3. Although I appreciate the amount of effort required to write a book, I simply can not recommend this one. The book describes unimportant or familiar concepts (like the traditional relational model) in too much detail and new or important concepts (like the Oracle8 object extension syntax) in not enough detail. Many of the diagrams do not appear to relate to the topics being discussed and the examples are too few and far between. I felt that the author used terminology inconsistently or at the very least did not define terms adequately. One might argue that the book is about object-oriented design and not about Oracle `syntax' but if you want to learn about OO check-out books by Booch, Jacobson, Fowler, Rumbaugh, Wirfs-Brock, etc. If you want to learn about Oracle objects try "Oracle8 Design Using UML Object Modeling" by Dorsey et. al.



4. I have founded many errors in chapter 8 of this book and I want to contact with its author



5. The topics are explained understandable. Should be especially good for beginners. It is a book that summes up Oracle 8 features, that werent there with Oracle 7. But even when talking about object oriented design the authors talkes about the traditional waterfall phase model... anyway, The book is one of those you read thru to see what's the matter and then deepen the parts you want to know more about with other books. A very good enhancement to this are the Steven Feuerstein books on PL/SQL and Packages. If you should deal with Oracle 8i (with the JVM and Corba/IIOP in the Server and stored procedures possible to write in Java) the book is of no use at all. Fazit: Good for beginners to get an overall view

3 comments about Oracle8 Database Administration on Windows Nt.

1. This book gives you a good explanation of how Oracle is implemented on Windows NT. It does a good job covering installation, backup and recovery, and basic tuning. However, I purchased this book specifically for more information on Job Scheduling through Oracle Enterprise Manager. This topic is not covered in this book.



2. I guess the author is a populor teacher in his class. This book has covered most of the requireed knowledge for an Oracle DBA. It contains many figures which will save readers a lot of time in understanding and exercising. The text is simple but to the point. The attached CDROM is not of much interest to me.



3. I found this book too lightweight on conveying real hands-on skills for using Oracle 8 for Windows NT. The focus seems more on a combination of theory and hands-on, achieving neither. Since I am using the OEM for most DB admin the combination of command line and GUI contributed to the confusion.

5 comments about Ocp Training Guide: Oracle Dba (Training Guides (New Riders)).

1. This book has good organization; yet lacks the delivery of the goods. Touches on the subjects briefly; sometimes confuses the issues completely and shrouds things in more mystery than necesarry. The test questions are riddled with mistakes. Obviously whoever wrote them did not read it or any other reference materials. In short, need more and better meat than this to pass.



2. The book is well written and provides the student with good working knowledge of Oracle 7/8. But the materials seem to be slightly out of sync with the exams. Some subject areas are covered in greater detail than necessary for the exam. A few of the exam question topics were not covered in the Training Guide. The book's review questions do not properly prepare the student for the complex type of questions on the exam.



3. This book gives an excellent summary of the OCP-required knowledge base. I read it, and then read the Coriolis Exam Crams and Oracle Performance Tuning (Gurry, Corrigan). My only (minor) criticisms are the confusing PL/SQL section and the lightweight treatment of Tuning. Overall though, a very worthwhile purchase.



4. I felt this book had the best exams and chapter review questions.

   Nonethless I recommend you read all the OCP books out there, and take all the sample exams you can get you hands on.




5. There are some small errors, but the book has good examples and covers most of the exam topics. It's easy to read and well organized. Since there aren't so many OCP study guides, you should give it a try.

No comments about High Performance Oracle Database Automation: Creating Oracle Applications with SQL and PL/SQL.

No comments about Oracle Enterprise Dba Backup and Recovery.

No comments about Oracle 8i : PL/SQL.

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.