Oracle Database 11g : New Features for DBAs and Developers (Expert's Voice in Oracle) (Paperback)

by Sam R. Alapati (Author), Charles Kim (Author)
Key Phrases: data recovery advisor, reset time, installed products, Oracle Database, Data Pump, Data Guard (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Oracle Database 11g : New Features for DBAs and Developers is a comprehensive, example–laden review of the most significant new features and improvements offered by the latest release of Oracle Corporation’s flagship database product.

• Learn what’s new in Oracle that really counts.
• See actual examples and test run output.
• Make sound decisions on new feature adoption.

Sift the gold from the silt and discover which new features of the latest release of Oracle’s flagship database product are really worth adopting. Years of database administration experience from authors Sam Alapati and Charles Kim are combined with sound, step–by–step testing and a heart–felt emphasis on what matters in the real–world to help you get the most out of Oracle Database 11g .

What you’ll learn

• Which new features really can make your day–to–day work easier
• How to automate more of your DBA work than ever before

Who is this book for?

Oracle Database 11g : New Features for DBAs and Developers is for developers, DBAs, project managers, consultants, and other technically minded users of the Oracle database. The book will be of use to any professional in the field who wants to quickly review the new features offered by the Oracle Database 11g release.

About the Author

Sam R. Alapati is an experienced Oracle database administrator who holds the Oracle OCP DBA and the Hewlett–Packard UNIX System Administrator certifications. He currently manages Oracle databases at the Boy Scouts of America 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.

Director of Database Technologies at Novara Solutions, Inc. Charles is the author of the 107+ page Maximum Availability Architecure case study at Oracle's Website (http://www.oracle.com/technology/deploy/availability/htdocs/FNF_CaseStudy.html), and is an Oracle Certified DBA, Redhat Certified Technician, and Microsoft Certified Professional. He has over 16 years of IT experience and has worked with Oracle since 1991. Charles is also a technical editor for Oracle Press. Charles has presented advanced topics for IOUG and Oracle OpenWorld on such topics as RAC/ASM and 7x24 High Availability Considerations using Oracle Advanced Replication, Hot Standby and Quest Shareplex. Charles also runs the dbaexpert.com website (http://www.dbaexpert.com) and provides technical solutions to Oracle DBAs and developers.

Product Details

• Paperback: 602 pages
• Publisher: Apress (November 15, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590599101
• ISBN-13: 978-1590599105
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #90,707 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars It's ok. Problems with examples and incorrect information, December 29, 2007

By	LoveOracleBooks (Probably traveling somewhere, USA) - See all my reviews

I was very excited to get this book. I like to stay current on Oracle database product changes. There is a great deal of information here (I have the other New Features book from Freeman but have not read it yet).

I have found a few problems with the text (I'm still reading it to be honest). First, several of the examples have errors in the code and generated errors when I tried to run them.

One such case is on page 146. A SQL query demonstrated there has some two obvious SQL errors. Clearly it was not tested, because it could not have run without an error (it bombed on me).

Another example is on page 166 where we find dbms_scheduelr instead of dbms_scheduler. A typo, yes, but one easily caught if the examples were tested.

Another example is on page 165 with a call to dbms_scheduler.set_attribute which has a typo. There are others, but you get the idea. It would also be nice if the code was available online somewhere.

The bottom line is that it seems that at least part of this code was not tested.

It also seems that the authors wrote part of this book on the 11g beta. I ran into one problem with the discussion on invisible indexes. The book indicates that you can use hints to force the use of an invisible index. When I tried this, it did not work (this drove me crazy as I was wondering what I was doing wrong!). After some research I found out that this was true in the beta but was not true in the final production cut of Oracle. Another example of what I think is a beta leftover has to do with SQL Query Result Caching. When I was trying this feature I found I could not set result_cache_mode to AUTO as documented in the book (page 176). When I looked in the Oracle documentation I found that AUTO was not a supported value.

Another problem I have is that examples are incomplete. For example, on page 162 there is a discussion on lightweight jobs. The examples are incomplete. I had to go figure out how to create a program (I had not used the scheduler before to be honest) before I could create the lightweight job. I spent about an hour fiddling with this, because another thing not pointed out by the author (or clearly in the documentation to be honest) are the restrictions on lightweight jobs. I know it's a new features book, and maybe I should know the scheduler, but I think at least the examples should be self-contained if possible.

Another twist appears on page 329. The author talks about a new feature that will eliminate failed loads on external tables. The only problem is that he does not give us any detail on how to actually use this new feature. Instead we get an example of how to create a table in Oracle 10g and he moves on to other features.

In the end, 3 stars seems about right to me. A lot of work went into this book, and I think I learned quite a bit about 11g, but I question now some of what I learned based on problems I've run into. I'll be reading the Freeman book mentioned by another review, shortly. It should provide a good contrast and check and balance.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars very good book written in a hurry, January 12, 2008

By	Ahmed Baraka (UAE) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I selected this book because it's written by Alapati. I've read excellent books before by this author. Unluckily, this one is not among them.
I've finished reading the first three chapters and so far I found too many typing errors, errors in the code and unprecise statements. Obviously it was written in hurry.
All in all, this book does its purpose to me to learn Oracle 11g new features but I expected higher quality from Alapati and Apress.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Decent 11g New Features Book, April 29, 2008

By	derBirus "Eric" (Minnesota USA) - See all my reviews

For the most part it was a decent book and gave me a great overview of the new features in Oracle 11g. However there are quite a few typos and a bit of inaccurate information (result_cache_mode = AUTO is not valid/supported).

I wouldn't say this is a bad book - it's a nice read and contains the majority of the information. I am impressed by it being one of the first 11g books out. The authors put in a lot of hard work and I congratulate them.