Customer Reviews

Oracle: A Beginner's Guide

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was reading this book to get familiar with some of DBA work in Oracle and found that it had lots of errors and typos in the areas that I know as well as obvious mistakes in examples. If I see that it's wrong about things I know - how can I trust it about the things I don't know? Read with caution, don't be surprized when examples don't work.

This book suffers from a lack of consistant tone and flow. The chapter on PL/SQL is bad. The examples are incomplete and poorly explained. The SQL and DBA chapters are decent. This book doesn't appear to be a labor of love. The updates for Oracle 8 and 8i add a couple of chapters, but the failings of the earlier editions remain.

Organized in a way uncharactaristically logical for technical documentation, this book is great as a first-time user handbook as well as a reference for those who can't memorize every element of SQL, etc. You will find the information you need quickly and with little aggrivation due to its consistant layout and excellent index.

The only thing to watch out for is how it sometimes ignores (or gives little attention to) Oracle's limitations.

As someone starting from ground zero, I found this book easy to read and understand. My one reservation is that the authors sometimes used terms and code examples which had not been previously defined or explained. A more complete explanation of code examples would have been very helpful in some places. However, the book is still very much worth reading.

I'm into the third chapter and the book is an easy read and explains the topic with good examples. So far I have no bones about the format and I'm not a DBA as of yet so, I can't rip this book apart. What I like about this book are the following: 1.Technical terms/words defined at the start of each chapter 2.Good laymen expamles of subject, terms and functions, 3.Tutorial format, 4.Easy reading.

Buy this book if you are totally new to Oracle and would like to get introduced to all that is out there. It is not too focused and I realized that I wanted more very soon and am already looking for the next level. It's useful but not enough.

* It introduces a variety of topics ( General concept, Architecture, SQL*plus, Forms, Reports, Loader, DBA stuff, tuning and so on... so it is priced well for all that information that is offered. However if your need is more focused then do not buy this book.

* Has got a gentle pace and lots of reminders, tips and guidelines to help you let the facts sink in.

* Some analogies used by the authors to emphasize system concepts were very distracting.

* One initial chapter dealt a lot with "how to install the software", which is hardly what I was looking for.