Customer Reviews

Advanced Oracle SQL Programming: The Expert Guide to Writing Complex Queries (Oracle In-Focus series)

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I am an ardent reader of Laurent Schneider's blog: http://laurentschneider.com/. His deep understanding of databases is unparalleled. The tips he provides are very practical and handy. That's probably what raised my expectations from his book: "Advanced Oracle SQL Programming". I have just finished reading through this book and I can clearly say that I am a bit disappointed with the book.
- It feels more like a collection of Laurent's notes on various Oracle SQL topics.
- There is a disconnect between one topic and the next one.
- Topics are very brief, often not exceeding 3-4 sentences. Much more detailed discussion/analysis of each concept would have made the book more readable.
- More tips/tricks (like the ones in boxes with an explosive symbol) would have made me go back to this book often.
- This may sound trivial, but the formatting of the code unnecessarily takes up too much space. e.g, in the first chapter itself, all the "INSERT" statements run to 8 pages! They could have easily been arranged 2 columns/page. They are not even required because it is available for download anyway at the book's website.
Nice things I found in the book:
- Exercise problems are really good, will make you think.
- Explanation on Joins, Subquery and Hierarchical queries are so far the best I have read.

I found most of the book to be a rehash of other material Oracle published. Most of the SQL I would not consider advanced. I felt if a intermediate at best. I bought this book about 6 months ago and after reading I have only used it once or twice as reference. There is some stuff in one of the middle chapters, but overall I was disappointed.

Probably the worst Technical book I have ever read. It is poorly formatted, and some paragraphs just do not make sense. Examples are weak, and not explained leaving you to toil over it to figure what the writter is trying to accomplish. I highly recommend avoiding this book. Do not make the costly mistake I did.

This is not an advanced SQL book. It is an excellent introduction to the Oracle SQL environment. I was expecting much more discussion about how to handle difficult SQL problems.

After few month of writing SQL, everyone has a good grasp of the language basics - you can use joins, where, group by and nested queries and 99% of the time, this is enough.

But sometimes, this is not enough, or maybe it does the job, but its slow or ugly. And you wonder - is there a better way to select data?

This book will show you a better way. Laurent Schneider is an Oracle developer with over a decade of experience. He shows you all the tricks and techniques that real experts use when writing queries.

"Advanced Oracle SQL Programming" covers every advanced function and feature that Oracle has to offer and gives plenty of real-life, business relevant examples of how these advanced features should be used. You'll find yourself writing better code almost immediately, and the book even contains exercises that will allow you to practice your new skills as you learn.