Customer Reviews

Guide to Oracle9i

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All you have to do is do all the tutorials, and the practice exercises, and you will be on your way to creating SQL scripts, oracle forms and reports. Step by step instructions and plenty of examples. Sometimes redundant, but it helps you nonetheless. Get it, if you are planning to get into Oracle.

I have used this book for a university oracle class. It is ok, but I was quickly frustrated when I needed to create forms in Oracle Form Designer. It doesn't explain how to use the Java applet that the forms run in very well and how to manipulate it. Also there were form elements that aren't explained. I don't wish to be too negative because the authors do a good job for beginners such as myself.

I have used the Morrison and Morrison texts for years, and have found them useful for teaching the Developer tools. However, the sample databases have basic design problems that to me, detract from the overall quality of the book. For example:

The Student table of the Northwoods database has an interval attribute called time_enrolled. If the goal is to store the amount of time the student has been enrolled, that won't work very well because attribute's data will become obsolete the moment after it is stored. It looks like the authors wanted to work in the new Oracle data type, but misapplied it. Complicating issues is the fact that the interval data type is not supported by the 9i Developer tools, so the authors have to change the table design later in the book. Disappointingly, they change the time_enrolled field to a character string, which makes even less sense. The only accurate way to know enrollment time is to calculate it by subtracting the date of enrollment (which is what should have been stored in the table) from the current date.

Another example is the Order_Line table of the Clearwater Traders database, which does not contain an attribute to store the price the customer actually paid for the item. What happens when prices change? Of course you would lose the information of what any customer actually paid for an item. That would be a problem if you need to make a refund. Interestingly, the authors did have a price attribute in that table in an older edition of the book, but inexplicably removed it.

This book is good for a biginner especially a student who wants to enter the oracle 9i world. It covers the RDBMS and also form 9i. Overall, I will recommend it.