Customer Reviews

Oracle Essentials, 3e: Oracle Database 10g

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

 

 

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.

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!

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.

I code databases for a living and use Oracle quite often. I picked this book to increase my knowledge on the oracle database partly out of curiosity. The book is refreshingly small (~300 pages) but make no mistake, this doesn't leave many essentials out. It doesn't cover SQL and PL/SQL though. It's a one trick pony which is very good at what it advertises i.e. good intro to database architecture and features

I approach each release of Oracle with trepidation simply because each release contains so many new features and with it a considerable amount of documentation.

I think everyone who is considering Oracle 10g should definitely purchase Oracle Essentials - Oracle Database 10g. It succinctly gives the highlights of the database in general as well as specific new features in an easily digestable manner. It not only explains the parts and pieces of the database, but why and how they are used. This book is heaven sent for me. This compact book gives me everything I need to know in one terrific volume and encourages me to delve further in the specific areas I need to know.

As for one of the authors, Bob Stackowiak, I have known him for many years and have always been impressed with his breadth of knowledge on the database. To recently discover that he is one of the authors of this book makes it all the more compelling to read.

I highly recommend this book.

Prior to this book, I had almost know experience or knowledge of the Oracle database. I really like the approach the author's used with this book. What I really want when I'm learning a new topic is to get a fairly broad, fairly shallow introduction to the material. I want the most important points summed up in a way that makes sense to a new guy. I don't want to delve deep into each topic and I don't want things explained in a way that requires me to look up and learn every other term in order to understand the points. And that is the approach the authors have taken. The point of the book isn't to make you an expert at any one area of Oracle. At lot of the book is spent discussing *why* certain features are important and how they fit into the big picture, sometimes without a lot of discussion on the features themselves. This may frustrate some readers, but I found it to be very helpful. For example, I don't need to know everything about Oracle redo logs or all the ins-and-outs of Oracle's support for business intelligence. What I *do* need to know is why the redo logs exist and a high level overview of how Oracle handles BI. This book gives you the bird's eye view of the Oracle landscape and let's you make the determination on where you need to take a closer look.

The book is well written. It's easy to read, generally very clear, and does not contain many errors (I don't think I found any).

Another really nice feature is the appendix containing a listing of additional resources where you can go to find more information about Oracle. These are broken out by chapter (i.e. topic). This is a great feature because it really helps with the next obvious step--digging deeper.

All in all, I can't recommend this book enough. An enjoyable read with a great strategy behind it.

This book can probably justify its cost by removing the 10g bit from its title. There is very little information about 10g [except Appendix A, which is simply defn of terms]. In general, this book is very shallow. I was completely disappointed.