Oracle Essentials, 3e: Oracle Database 10g [Paperback]

Rick Greenwald (Author), Robert Stackowiak (Author), Jonathan Stern (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0596005857 | ISBN-13: 978-0596005856 | Publication Date: February 18, 2004 | Edition: Third Edition

An enormous system comprising myriad technologies, options, and releases, Oracle's complexities have spawned numerous areas of specialization. For each area of specialization there are equally specialized how-to books and manuals. O'Reilly's Oracle Essentials claims a unique place among these books. Rather than focusing on one area, the book explains the foundational concepts of the Oracle technology and the core technical and business aspects of using it.

The new edition of this classic book, Oracle Essentials, 3rd Edition: Oracle Database 10g, distills a vast amount of knowledge into an easy-to-read volume covering every aspect of the Oracle database. Readers of all levels will learn about Oracle's features and technologies, including the product line, architecture, data structures, networking, concurrency, tuning, and much more.

Featuring focused text, abundant illustrations, and helpful hints, the new edition offers a valuable overview of Oracle's Database 10g--the industry's first database to support grid computing. Recent releases such as Oracle 9i and 8i are also covered. The book contains chapters on:

• Oracle products, options, and overall architecture for Oracle 10g and prior recent releases
• Installing and running Oracle: how to configure, start up, and shut down the database, and various networking issues
• Oracle data structures, datatypes, and ways of extending datatypes, with an introduction to Oracle objects (e.g., tables, views, indexes)
• Managing Oracle: security, the Oracle Enterprise Manager, fragmentation and reorganization, and backup and recovery
• Oracle performance: characteristics of disk, memory, and CPU tuning
• Multi-user concurrency, online transaction processing (OLTP), and high availability
• Hardware architectures (e.g., SMP, MPP, NUMA) and their impact on Oracle
• Data warehousing and distributed databases
• Network deployment: using Oracle as an Internet computing platform and for grid computing
• What's new in Oracle 10g: a summary of the database changes described in the book

Oracle Essentials, 3rd Edition: Oracle Database 10g was written for anyone whose job involves managing or building systems using Oracle DBMS technology or working with staff that uses Oracle technology. This book is the perfect all-in-one source for understanding the complexities and capabilities of Oracle.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

has been active in the world of computer software for nearly two decades, including stints with Data General, Cognos, and Gupta. He is currently an analyst with Oracle Corporation. He has been a principal author of ten books and countless articles on a variety of technical topics, and has spoken at conferences and training sessions across six continents. In addition to Oracle in a Nutshell, Rick's books include Oracle Essentials: Oracle9i, Oracle8i, and Oracle8 (principal author with Robert Stackowiak and Jonathan Stern, O'Reilly & Associates, 2001), Oracle Power Objects Developer's Guide (principal author with Kasu Sista and Richard Finklestein, Oracle Press, 1995); Mastering Oracle Power Objects (principal author with Robert Hoskins, O'Reilly & Associates, 1996); Using Oracle Web Server (principal author with many others, Que Publishing, 1997); The Oracle WebDB Bible (principal author with Jim Milbery, IDG Books Worldwide, 1999); and Administering Exchange Server (principal author with Walter Glenn, Microsoft Press, 1999).

Oracle Power Objects Developer's Guide, principal author with Kasu Sista and Richard Finklestein (Oracle Press, 1995) Mastering Oracle Power Objects, principal author with Robert Hoskins (O'Reilly & Associates, 1996) Special Edition: Using Oracle Web Server, principal author with many others (Que Publishing, 1997) The Oracle WebDB Bible, principal author with Jim Milbery (IDG Books Worldwide, 1999) Administering Exchange Server, principal author with Walter Glenn (1999) Robert Stackowiak has worked for 20 years in IT industry related roles that have included software development, management of software development, systems engineering, sales and sales consulting, and business development. He currently is recognized worldwide as a field sales expert in data warehousing at Oracle, and previously was well recognized for his work at IBM's RISC System/6000 Division, Harris Computer Systems, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Bob has spoken at numerous computer related conferences and has conducted briefings with companies based around the world. His papers regarding data warehousing and computer and software technology have appeared in publications such as The Data Warehousing Institute's Journal of Data Warehousing, Informix Tech Notes, and AIXcellence Magazine.

Jonathan Stern has over 11 years of IT experience, including senior positions in consulting, systems architecture, and technical sales. He has in-depth experience with the Oracle RDBMS across all major open systems hardware and operating systems, covering tuning, scaling and parallelism, Parallel Server, high availability, data warehousing, OLTP, object-relational databases, N-tier architectures, and emerging trends such as Java and CORBA. He is the Central USA Technical Team Leader at Ariba, Inc., the leading vendor of electronic commerce solutions for strategic procurement. Previously, he led a team of highly experienced database specialists at Oracle Corporation providing technical depth and strategic assistance to Oracle's largest customers in the North Central USA. Jonathan has authored papers and presented at internal and external conferences on topics such as scaling with Oracle's dynamic parallelism and the role of reorganizing segments in an Oracle database.

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; Third Edition edition (February 18, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596005857
• ISBN-13: 978-0596005856
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #414,143 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #37 in Books > Computers & Technology > Databases > Oracle
  • #54 in Books > Computers & Technology > Databases > Relational Databases

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars everything oracle, May 2, 2004

By 

Jeanne Boyarsky (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Oracle Essentials, 3e: Oracle Database 10g (Paperback)

As with most O'Reilly books, Oracle Essentials is crammed full of information. The book is geared for DBA's, system admins and developers. The book assumes some general knowledge of databases, but most concepts are explained as they come up. For example, there are sidebars for normalization and RAID.

The third edition is updated for Oracle 10g. Since the authors point out which features are specific to Oracle 8i, 9i and 10g, this book is just as useful for older versions of Oracle. For readers of previous editions, the book has an appendix directing the reader to the new 10g content.

For developers, using Java with Oracle is explained. There are good sections on SQLJ, JDBC, EJBs and Java stored procedures. For DBA's and system admins, the book covers architecture, failover and deployment.

The book uses a good mix of text, diagrams and examples. Many cutting-edge topics are explained with a non-platform specific background of the topic and examples. These topics include OLTP, Data Warehousing, Business Intelligence and of course - Grid Computing.

I found the list of major technologies to be extremely useful. Chapter 1 has a paragraph on Oracle features in the database, application server and standalone development tools. The rest of the book focuses on the database itself. This book covers almost everything you would want to know about Oracle and provides references for more detail on each topic. If you are only going to buy one Oracle book, this is the one to buy.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Effective quick introduction to Oracle, January 31, 2005

By 

Paul Filipski (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Oracle Essentials, 3e: Oracle Database 10g (Paperback)

I've used a number of different database systems before, but never had the pleasure of working with Oracle's software. I installed a development version of 10g and was somewhat taken aback when the installer proudly announced "169 products installed." I glumly thought "Gee, hope the database server is in there somewhere."

I picked up a copy of Oracle Essentials and found it to be an excellent introduction to Oracle. The book is short enough to read end-to-end, but it is packed with information about Oracle's architecture and most of those 169 products. The authors write lucidly, in an easily accessible style. Even though the book is eminently readable, it doesn't "talk down" to the reader, nor skimp on details. There is surprising depth in so short a book with such broad scope!

As another reviewer mentioned, there is essentially nothing about SQL and PL/SQL in this book. That's okay with me - there are plenty of excellent texts on those two topics.

Oracle Essentials claims it is "What you need to know about Oracle Database architecture and features." I agree completely!

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent theory, but no details, May 6, 2005

By 

Ron (Cleveland, OH United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Oracle Essentials, 3e: Oracle Database 10g (Paperback)

I agree with the good things my fellow reviewers have to say about this book - it is an excellent introduction to the Oracle architecture. But be advised that although the book is rich in theory, there is virtually no hands-on, how-to information. As a result I sometimes spent hours researching how to implement a feature described in the book, when the author could have explained it in a couple of sentences. I highly recommend it - but if you plan on working with the database yourself you will need to supplement it with a good hands-on book, the Oracle on-line documentation, and a lot of trial and error.