Expert Oracle9i Database Administration [Paperback]

Sam R. Alapati (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 10, 2003

This is the only real Oracle 9i Database Administration book on the market! This 1,000 page book enables a beginner or intermediate level Oracle DBA or Oracle Developer/Manager to master the art of building and managing complex Oracle 9i databases. Expert Oracle 9i Database Administration is thorough in covering all aspects of the 9i database and also includes a UNIX primer, as well as an introduction to SQL and PL/SQL. Sam R. Alapati covers the entire spectrum of the new Oracle 9i RDBMS software and clearly explains how to use all of its powerful features.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Sam R. Alapati is an experienced Oracle database administrator who holds the Oracle Certified Professional designation and the Hewlett-Packard UNIX System Administrator certification. He currently manages Oracle databases at the Boy Scouts of America's national headquarters in Los Colinas, Texas. Alapati has been dealing with databases for a long time, including the Ingres RDBMS in the mid-1980s. He is also well-versed in the Microsoft SQL Server, Sybase, and IBM DB2 database management systems.

Product Details

• Paperback: 1248 pages
• Publisher: A-Press (April 10, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590590228
• ISBN-13: 978-1590590225
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 2.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,855,248 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not for the beginners, July 15, 2004

By 

Jaewoo Kim "OB-Wan" (Santa Monica, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Expert Oracle9i Database Administration (Paperback)

I am a MS SQL DBA learning Oracle and this was the first book I read after going through the Oracle's official curriculum. Here are my thoughts.

1)This book is definitely not for the beginners. I highly recommend you start with a more basic book that gives you an overview of Oracle. Oracle tools are highly unintuitive and using them can be a frustrating experience especially for MS SQL DBAs *smirk*. Learning to just to connect to an Oracle database is a learning experience that will take knowledge on how Oracle's network and security function.

2)If you already have a working knowledge on how to operate an Oracle database, this book will no doubt provide a more solid foundation for your knowledge (except RAC). I particularly found its chapters on RMAN and IMPORT/EXPORT utilties particularly helpful.

3)Perhaps the best part of this book is that it encompasses what the author believes is the most essential knowledge to becoming a highly competent Oracle DBA. The book does not try to be a reference for every Oracle topic. Instead, the author has smartly picked the most important information needed and presented them in a readable format.

4)My only issue with this book is that it is wordy. The book is 1200 pages long and it could easily have been 1000 pages or fewer.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Too much / Too Little, April 13, 2004

By 

developer1 "developer1" (Los Angeles, USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Expert Oracle9i Database Administration (Paperback)

For some reason my previous less than glowing review never made it, so I will try again but unfortunately I don't have time to cite all the specific examples I did before.

I feel the author made a very good attempt to write a comprehensive useful reference on Oracle 9, but the information is very often: a) too cursory, b) rife with mistakes or typos that are serious.

What is needed is very simple: the author must sit down with a novice Oracle user/developer such as myself and observe the user try to apply the information in the book to actual tasks. Then the book should be rewritten to clarify / correct the information in the book.

In the few areas I have tried to apply the information in the book, I have inevitably had problems where key information was missing, confusing, or wrong.

In setting up tables for gathering statistics for the optimizer, the author seems to confuse the concept of the actual data dictionary statistics table with a holding table that is not immediately applied.

In describing the imp and exp import and export utilities, try to find where the author tells you how to export data from one database and import it into another database on the same server. Where do you specify the database?

Here's another one I am editing into this review based on recent experience:

In chapter 18 "Improving Database Performance: SQL Query Optimization", the author discusses the "Explain Plan" facility to reveal the plan that the optimizer has chosen for your query. The plan should be a vital tool to help you tune your query and troubleshoot performance problems.

However, the examples the author gives us are woefully inadequate because the plan information does not include the filter (WHERE clause) information for each index scan, table scan, etc. operation. If your query is at all complicated, you will be immediately lost as to which part of your query the operation pertains to or what it is doing.

However, the filter information is indeed available in the "plan_table" (in the ACCESS_PREDICATES and FILTER_PREDICATES columns) -- Alapati simply neglects to tell us about it or use it.

Even worse, he fails to point out the supplied utility which provides the best presentation of the plan and also the simplest and easiest way to get it -- the "utlxpls.sql" script in the "$ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/admin" directory. Run that and you are home free.

These are the gems that an author should steer you to, but time and again he misses them. A great book should cut to the chase and save you time and effort. Perhaps in his 10g book he has improved things. In this 9i book he repeatedly falls short.


I would never rely on this book to get a job done. But it probably makes a good "survey" read to identify topics and issues to explore further. However, given that, the book should either be 1/3 as long (survey) or 3 times a long (thorough reference) to be useful.

Some areas I like the most were the discussions of optimization (which seemed to cover more than expected, but I haven't gone too deeply into it. Note my critique of "Explain Plan") and operating system specific advice, such as uninstalling under Windows. But the OS advice should probably be a separate book, there are so many gotchas and hidden rules as to how Oracle decides where certain files are, etc.

This book is just not enough for actual use. But I think it could be if the author sat down with real users and really understood the problems encountered and discussed all the pertinent cases that arise. Again, you might end up with three volumes.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gret Oracle DBA book, April 26, 2003

By 

"nancyrichter" (California, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Expert Oracle9i Database Administration (Paperback)

Finally, I bought a book which really explains how the Oracle9i database works. I have sevral other 9i books, but Sam Alapati's book is outstanding in it's coverage of the 9i DBA material. The material is explained well, so I can see how the database works. Chapter 19 on Instance Tuning is quite good and helped me understand difficult material like parsing and the wait interface.
A small investment that goes a long way.