5 comments about Oracle SQL Interactive Workbook (2nd Edition) (Interactive Workbook Series).

1. I really liked reading and doing the lessons in this book. The hands-on exercises are fantastic. Better yet, there were a few things I didn't understand clearly, and so I e-mail the author and she answers any questions that I might have. There are a few minor glitches in the book, some proof-read errors, which most of them are corrected on their web site which are listed on theot errata page. I've already reported a couple errors that I found and will update their proof-read error page. One annoying thing was having to turn back and forth to the back of the book to see the database schema diagram. The best thing to do is just photo copy the diagram so you don't have to constantly turn to the back of the book while doing the exercises.



2. The book informs you of various sql commands, but fails to give you the general syntax. If what you are trying to do has not been explicitely done in the book, it is unlikely to find what you are looking for in the book. The book is truly a workbook, and nothing else, and should not be purchased as an oracle sql refrence book.



3. Could you master a foreign language with a reference work? If so, then this book is not for you because you're already a guru. Oracle Press books handle that nicely. SQL is analogous to a foreign language, and most people learn foreign languages through extensive exercises that build towards mastery. This book does that, and, as such, there's little out there that compares. If you patiently enter every SQL query in this book and break it down into its constituent parts, examine each query's output, do every exercise even if it means looking at the solution as you solve it, complete every "Test Your Thinking" exercise, redo chapters 4, 5, and 7 at every opportunity, and think, this book will become the most extensive SQL reference work you can imagine--that's right SQL, not simply Oracle's implementation of it. This is because this book shows you how to apply SQL in ways you may not have imagined (my brain still hurts). The drawbacks: (1) Oracle dbase software required for the companion dbase--don't get this book if you don't have access to Oracle because it relies on intimate knowledge of the companion dbase, (2) dizziness from the frequency of your hand smacking your forehead when asking yourself "Why didn't I think of that"? The prose is succinct and elegant in its clarity except for chapter 7, where the need for and role of correlative subqueries, inline views, and scalar subquery expressions and the theory behind them could have been explicated better, particularly where and when they can/should substitute for equijoins. Specifically, a one-stop-shopping set of guidelines as to when these types of subqueries are desirable over their equijoin counterparts would have been very helpful.



4. This book waltzes through conceptually difficult material for the novice SQL'er. Correlated subqueries are given 3 pages. This is ridiculous! Furthermore, before a SQL novice can digest the conceptual ideas, Rishert presents examples which differ from what the novice is trying to digest. Yes, the examples present true information, but they leave the novice wondering what makes sense. The book needs a re-write if it wants to be presented to the community as a 'learning tool'. I'd recommend it to a novice provided the novice has a tutor on call.



5. I teach college computer classes, although my BA & MA are in linguistics. The only computer course I've actually taken was a non-credit course in Oracle SQL. I was pretty satisfied with it.
   
   I'm only in lab 2 of 16 in this book, and have already learned MANY new things! It's very well written, giving you a little, testing you a little, etc. I strongly recommend it.

5 comments about Microsoft SQL Server 2000 DBA Survival Guide (2nd Edition).

1. I bought this book as it had spelt out a solution in the text and reffered to the source code suppossedly online. Tried witht eh publisher for many weeks to get the source code as promised to no avail. A good overview, but no real depth.



2. I bought this book as a companion to my exam prep reading for Microsoft's SQL Admin exam. I only had 6 months of working with SQL2K when I started to read and study. This book gave great clarification on otherwise vague material. The detail was easy to understand on all levels. I have now been working with SQL 2K for 2 years and still go to my survival guide for reference daily. Also- it's on it's 2nd edition- How many tech books last long enough to go to a 2nd edition?!



3. I bought this book upcoming becoming a SQL Server DBA. I had three years programming experience which included T-SQL, however, NO DBA experience! It provided excellent explanations of DBA tasks, especially the all important database backups and restorations. I did not require any other book resources. I highly recommend it for those entering the DBA field.
   
   Side note: I only used this book for industry experience and have not used it towards an attempt at MCDBA certification. I have since read the MCSE SQL Server 2000 Administration Guide for Dummies and found the SQL Server 2000 DBA Survival Guide to provide more detail on certain subjects.



4. I read a lot on SQL Forum about this book. I am new to SQL Server 2000. So i took a chance to buy and put some of my energy into it. I am still in process of reading this book. But what i have learnt upto this point is really a big help in understanding what is SQL Server 2000 and its administration capabilities.
   Have a good luck !!



5. I still have not get the book yet. Please let me know how to get it.

5 comments about OCP Oracle9i Database: Fundamentals I Exam Guide.

1. This book blows. I read to book cover to cover and it misses alot of the key concepts covered on the exam. It dosen't go into enough detail in areas that need to be and goes into to much detail into subject such as utilities such as OEM. I don't even remember the book covering NLS topics. I suggest ordering a different prep book for this exam and buying STS software.



2. I used this Oracle Press book, the Sybex book, and the Self Test Software prep questions to pass the Oracle Fundamentals I exam.

   This book has received justifiable bad press. I bought it anyway, as I did not want to risk missing any material that might be presented in the "official" Oracle exam guide. I'm sure you'll buy it for the same reason.

   The Oracle Press book was difficult to read. The issues go beyond spelling errors and the many "Oracle 8I" references that should say "Oracle 9i". I can correct these errors myself. This book has serious editing issues that will impact your ability to understand the concepts presented. The author knows his stuff but the editor really dropped the ball. Oracle should take pity on certified hopefuls and rewrite it.

   However, not all is lost. You can avoid getting mired down in Oracle's presentation by printing the exam objectives from the Oracle web site and focus your studies around this outline. Consider buying the Sybex book as an added guide. Pull details from both books using your exam ojective outline. The only exam objective I found to be missing from the Oracle Press book was on NLS. NLS is covered in the Sybex book.

   Good luck!




3. I used this book to prepare for my Exam 1z0-031 but not as main reference. I used it to supplement the Sybex Study guide. It has some errors but I would say it is a decent book to use as preparation tool. I liked the practice exam questions. I did not have to buy any sotware for my practice exam questions. Those already in this book helped me.
   I give 3 stars and I will definitely recommend this book as supplement to the Sybex study guide if you are preparing for OCP exam Exam 1z0-031.



4. This book does not cover all the details for Fundamentals II. It is a good source for reference. The CD accompanied with the book has wrong answers for the questions. You may need to refer additional book(s), may be sybex one along with this one.



5. I read this book cover to cover..twice!!! The authors did a terrible job explaining the Architectural Components in depth. For any novice or beginner, how would you expect to get a grasp on storage structures(tablespaces,indexes,blocks) if you're getting a half ass instruction on what the main key components are? Their explaination of the buffer cache was no more that 10 lines of text. Nothing mentioned about the different structures within that cache. And the same goes for the other components.
   
   And as the other reviewer indicated, its terribly organized.The index in the book is a total joke.
   
   I think this is a great book for beginners who want to have a "general" understanding of Oracle,but if you want to conceptually understand the material and not blow $125, don't purchase this book.
   Get Sybex. Its does exactly opposite of what this book does. It Covers just about everthing you need to understand as a junior dba and test taker.

5 comments about SQL Instant Reference.

1. I felt the book was very vague. I understand it is a reference manual, but the syntax descriptions are very cryptic and hard to follow. I would not recommend this book.



2. I was very disappointed with this book. It does not really serve as a reference, but a small tutorial on SQL instead, with the text crowded into a small booklet. There are few tables and even fewew examples. Also, for MySQL users: Many of the capabilities are left out. I go to a reference to look up things, not to read through several pages only to find that what I'm looking for is not there.



3. I found this small reference to be a fantastic choice for me.

   I don't understand and totally disagree with the bad reviews. This is a 380+ page REFERENCE that not only covers every single SQL command with examples and illustrations, it covers SQL92, SQL99, plus it also includes the fundamentals of relational databases, some database design theory, and even some introductory SQL in case you are not familiar with it. If this is not enough, you also get a very nice glossary. The book is not platform specific, which is another nice plus.

   If you are looking for detail, get the SQL Programming from Wrox, or the SQL Unleashed book. If you want to quickly put out some fires, and want a manageable reference handy, then do not hesitate to buy this one.

   5 stars and totally recommended.




4. A good, concise, thorough, compact review of SQL92 in 350 pages, with user-friendly and thoughtful organisation and layout, and some examples.

   Like other reviewers I am puzzled by complaints that it is not a primer for SQL beginners and does not cover vendor extensions to the SQL language. If you need a primer, by all means buy a primer. If you need a book on a vendor's product, buy one of those. There are dozens!




5. As a SQL reference, this book is useless. I was expecting (at least) a definition if SQL commands: none. Get your SQL reference from the internet. It's free and at your fingertips...

No comments about Learning C# 3.0.

No comments about Oracle Database 11g: A Beginner's Guide.

2 comments about SQL: A Beginner's Guide.

1. It's probably not really for people who want in-depth knowledge about SQL and relational database.

   But it delivers the concept clearly without using too many words or using too many code or pictures.

   It's a very clear and consise book that refresh the most basic concept for experienced programmers.

   The style and editing makes it very easy to find the topic you want and it's a very clean book.




2. If you are just learning SQL this book is a MUST HAVE!! I highly recommend this book for beginners. This book teaches basic SQL commands with easy to read and understand instrucions.

5 comments about Oracle PL/SQL 101.

1. This book is incorrectly titled. It should read Oracle 101 SQL not PL/SQL. Simply put there are only 2 skimpy chapters on PL/SQL. If looking for PL/SQL purchase a different text and save yourself the aggravation and lost cost issues.



2. This book covers it all - the SQL you need to be able to write PL/SQL, and then actual PL/SQL procedures, functions, triggers, and packages.

   Look at the Table of Contents - covers everything you need. And easy to read too.




3. I bought this book to learn more PL/SQL, but 95% of it is about SQL. The title suggests PL/SQL. If you want to know more about PL/SQL, this is not the book to buy.



4. I was looking for more PL/SQL than this book offers (misleading title, I feel), but it contains good material. My biggest frustration, though (and unfortunately, this is shared by many technical books) is that the index is very incomplete. I would say that 80% of what I want to find in the book turns up empty when I use the index. Eventually I can find it by turning many pages, but I'd prefer not to waste so much time.



5. This is a great book for the very beginner person who has no experience at all in SQL. It is very in details and very easy to understand. Unfortunately, I have to return this book since it is not what I am looking for.

3 comments about SQL Built-In Functions and Stored Procedures: The i5/iSeries Programmer's Guide.

1. This book concentrates on using the IBM mid-range computer systems with DB2 as the database.
   
   SQL, is usually thought of as simply a bunch of commands used to manipulate data in a database. Most books talk about the big three SQL commands of SELECT, INSERT, and UPDATE as being just about all that SQL can do.
   
   In reality, the "L" stands for "Language" and the full fledged SQL's in the big databases are full fledged languages. Like other languages, they have logic, loops, functions, and internal variables just like other languages.
   
   While SQL is a standard, each implementation does things just a bit differently. This small book gives a very quick overview of the standard commands like SELECT, but spends most of its pages on doing stored procedures the IBM way.



2. Mike Faust did it again. He has given busy professionals a
   detailed, percise "how-to" book for SQL built-in functions and stored procedures. There's no excuse not to use these useful, time saving tools once you purchase this book.



3. I am a computer programmer/analyst for a major manufacturing company and a need has recently come for us to write some stored procedures for interfacing our machine software on PC workstations with our AS/400. I've written many RPG IV programs with embedded SQL and even wrapped them in stored procedures, but I wanted to learn SPL to try to avoid the middle man. This book was NOT easy-to-understand as advertised. Rather than explain, line by line, what each command does/means so that you can use it for your own purposes, he just gives you an example procedure and tells you what it does. These procedures are supposed to be useful, but we can't use many of them and I think some would be much better served in other languages. I found this book very poorly written and difficult to follow. It started out just fine, but about 50+ pages into it he abandons his clear explanations and goes far beyond a beginner's means--like flooring the pedal in a Firebird. It was almost as if he had a deadline to meet and wrote the second half of the book in a fraction of the time he spent on the first half. If I wanted something so technical and confusing I would have read the free IBM manual rather than buy this book. MC PRESS needs to change this book's rating from 'Novice' to 'Advanced' and a second edition needs to be released correcting all the errors. Mr. Faust you dropped the ball on this one.

5 comments about Oracle SQL and PL/SQL Handbook: A Guide for Data Administrators, Developers, and Business Analysts.

1. This is an excellent book aspiring DBAs, developers who need to get up to speed in Oracle, IT business systems analysts and business power users.

   Since this book has such a wide potential audience I'll highlight the chapters that will be of most interest to each segment. All readers will benefit from the introduction and chapter 1, which explains relational databases and entity-relationship diagrams. In particular, the E-R diagrams plus the clear discussion of keys and joins are the roadmap to the data and need to be understood by less technical users who want to fully exploit the power of SQL and PL/SQL, which are covered later in the book.

   Chapters 2 and 3 cover material that more technical users will find useful: "Building the Database with the Data Definition Language" and "The Data Control and Data Manipulation Languages and the Data Dictionary". I especially liked the fact that my favorite utility, TOAD, was covered in this section - if you are a new DBA chances are you already use it. If you're a developer, chances are that you'll add it to your development environment.

   The heart of this book is in Chapters 4-12. These chapters are for all readers, and they thoroughly cover SQL*Plus in detail. By the time you've finished these chapters (assuming you work through the practice exercises and put in effort) you'll be a SQL*Plus power user.

   Chapter 13 covers data warehouses and shows how to use Oracle Discoverer 4.0. This material is for both technical and business users. The remaining chapters cover PL/SQL, which is aimed at the technical users. The coverage of PL/SQL is not nearly as deep as the coverage of SQL*Plus. Since most business users and the intended technical audience will benefit more from the in-depth treatment of SQL*Plus, the PL/SQL material is, in my opinion, a good introduction that can be followed up in a book, such as "Oracle9i PL/SQL Programming" by Scott Urman.




2. I originally started an on-line training course to learn Oracle SQL however, the course was so confusing and dull that I thought the only way to learn was a 'do it yourself'.

   At the bookstore there were a couple of books that covered the topic but a quick browse through the books dictated this was the book for me! The others just seemed to be too 'techie' and boring.

   This book guides you through the A - Z of relational Databases. From the creation of tables, populating them and then retrieving, amending and deleting information - this is a one stop shop.

   There are examples to show the user exactly how to write things and also what is retrieved with each query. Everything is explained in an easily interpreted manner.

   There is also a database that comes with the book and you can practice what you have learned there and then. The quiz at the end of every chapter to review what you have just learned - is also very helpful.

   This should be the beginners handbook/bible to SQL - I have recommended it to everyone that I work with!




3. There are only four pages on Oracle 8i. This book is written for the outdated Forms Designer 4.5. What a disappointment! The newer Oracle Forms Builder 6 is considerably different. Furthermore, the forms used in the exercises often will not compile, (because the author made the unfortunate choice of the PL/SQL-Forms reserved word "TOOLS" for one of the table names). You can drop the TOOLS table and create it with another name to make the examples work.
   Some example forms need additional debugging. Taking empch14x.fmb as an example, this is what you need to do:
   1. Set mapping of other values to ?M? for the Gender item in data block one.
   2. Change the post query trigger to point to the correct file location for the images. For example: filename := 'c:\palinski\ch14\'||to_char(:one.payroll_number)||'emp.tif';
   3. Also in the post query trigger, you may need to change the ?filename varchar2(25);? to something longer such as filename varchar2(30); to handle a longer path name.

   4. Open the property palette for block two and change the Query Data Source Name and DML Data Target Name to the name of the re-named tools table. For example, if you renamed the TOOLS table to P_TOOLS, then enter the name P_TOOLS here.
   Once these changes are made, the form works well and displays a TIF image associated with each record.
   5. Open the property palette for the relation between block one and block two. Change the name of the TOOLS table to the name of the re-named tools table.

   Another example is form DirCh16.fmb. This is a ?directory? form, useful for finding records in large tables. To make this form work, open the property palette for block one and set Database Data Block = ?No?. This example form should have used parameters in the call to the next form, but instead the author used an unusual home-baked solution to pass a parameter to the called form.
   The text omits instructions on how to pass parameters to a form using a parameter list, and instead describes a makeshift way of adding a non-database block to a form to pass a variable. Students would be better off to use a parameter list as Oracle intended.
   Chapter 17 on reports briefly covers outdated Reports 2.5, which helps little towards learning Oracle 8i?s Reports 6. Chapter 18 explains how to customize and create reports manually.




4. The review by the reviewer from Lincoln does not pertain to this book. The book pertains to my book "Oracle Database Construction Kit" that was written in 1997 and is out of date even though the publisher continues to market it. At the time "Oracle Database" was published Forms Builder 4.5 was the current product and Oracle8 was just released. Oracle8i was still several years away.

   Please disregard his comments concerning this book since they do not pertain. In fact, this book does not even cover the Oracle development tools.




5. Palinski is full of errors, confusing and sometimes contradictory explanations. It seems to have been written by someone who is unfamiliar with Oracle, and just blindly compiled material from different sources.

   I had to check every topic by referring to other documents and manuals.

   In the beginning, you see this book is like college text, not for working Oracle person. I have more than 15 years experience in Oracle and did not find it useful.