Customer Reviews

Oracle Database Administration for Microsoft SQL Server DBAs (Oracle Press)

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Working in mixed database environments is a very interesting challenge, both for DBAs and developers. If we already have experience with SQL Server, and need to work with Oracle, our SQL Server experience may be an advantage - we already have a good handle on what an RDBMS should do (backups, restores, etc.). On the other hand, our experience and common patterns with SQL Server may cause us to make mistakes on Oracle, because its internals and best practices are not the same.

I have read a book named "Oracle Database Administration for Microsoft SQL Server DBAs", and I really liked it. The book's goal is to introduce Oracle to SQL Server data professionals, to explain similarities and differences between these two very common RDBMS. This book is filled with practical, real life information, necessary to perform daily activities of a production DBA. The book can really prevent us from missteps when we try to use Oracle as if it were SQL Server. It has the following chapters:

* Oracle Internals - I was especially fascinated by the description of transaction process flow, which is different in Oracle
* Oracle Installation, which also describes a few useful Linux commands, and connectivity
* Database Definitions and Setup (databases and schemas have different meanings)
* DBA Tools
* Database Backup, Restore, and Recovery
* Database Maintenance
* Performance and Tuning
* PL/SQL (which is VERY different from T-SQL)
* High Availability Architecture

Overall, this is a must-read book for any SQL Server professional intending to improve their Oracle skills.

This book merely regurgitates the freely available documentation from Oracle and MS SQL Server. However, this book is even worse since its space limitations means that the author is forced to be even more cryptic than the already difficult to understand product documentation. I could not find anything useful in this book - the book doesn't explain anything. Nothing at all. Aren't books like these supposed to simplify concepts for nonexperts or beginners? You think you will find a chart explaining orcl and sql svr concepts? No. Forget about this book.