Customer Reviews

Oracle Programming with Visual Basic

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I absolutely love the way the author gives an overview of each data acces technology followed by a "Typical Code" segment that gives a simple but adiquate sample of no b/s connection and data retrieval code. This alone earns the $32.00 but he goes on to give great detail on ADO, RDO, OO OLE etc. This book has become my number one refernce for RDO, ADO although I have many VB Books; simply beacuse it cuts to the chase.

Not to mention; The Oracle foundation set in the first 10 chapters is as good as it gets without turning the book into a 2000 page Oracle textbook. (The PL/SQL section is actually pretty comprehensive)Other reviews said the writting style was dry but the author simply gets to the point in each area. There is no wasted space or fluff.

I also appreciated the technique comparisons for optimizing data access for your given situation. I realy wish other programming books would use this layering writing style where the concepts are introduced lightly in dedicated pre-chapters (more than just a quick paragraph) and then presented in complete detail in later chapters. This way you can refernce each technology based on whether you need a quick (but adiquate)overview of code structure and object models or a comprehensive analysis of the methods etc.

After reading this book an intermediate VB programer can start building solid VB front ends (and more)for Oracle. I hope Nick comes out with an updated book with the new MS technologies that support Oracle. Thanks Nick!

There are very few books with "Oracle" and "Visual Basic" in the title. This is unfortunate for developers that want to gain insights into developing quality solutions with those technologies. This is especially so when the developer does not have the benefit of Oracle / VB experienced peers. Fortunately, however, Mr. Snowdon provides us with a well written book on both subjects under one title. The content is quite broad and rather simple and the examples are easy to test out. With that being said, this is definitely a great book for the novice (an experienced VB developer with little experience with Oracle or vice versa or just a plain ol' novice). Beginners could swallow it too, however, the breadth of content may prove somewhat daunting. The senior developer may encounter a degree of frustration with the simplicity or generality of some of the content, but oh well I guess...I found the following discussions very useful: Oracle physical architecture, data access (specifically ADO and the use of DSN-less connections), calling Oracle stored procedures and functions). I should mention that about half of the book deals with basics such as database design, SQL, VB, etc. So, if you need to get up to speed fairly quickly and you're not building a monolithic OLTP system then this is a good addition to your library. Besides, the price is right. I also recommend Dov Trietsch's 'VB Oracle 8' from Wrox which is better for the more advanced VB programmer (use of classes and better coverage of ADO especially in the area of dealing with server sided objects--stored procedures and server sided PL/SQL cursors).

As a final remark let me add that Oracle developers with VB skills (or vice versa, yet again) are capable of commanding large salaries or hourly rates. This is your opportunity as a computer geek to get the recognition you deserve and to live like a rock star.

Order yours now!

If you compare the size of this book with Dov Treitch's Visual Basic Oracle 8 (wrox), you might think you could get further using this book. That may be true if you're interested in doing Oracle dba tasks. But this book is titled "Oracle Programming".

The first 6 chapters, 210 pages, are dedicated to Oracle architecture and administrative tasks, such as deploying an Oracle db. In my opinion, if you're programming you may need to know about 10 pages worth of this info, good luck finding it, and if you're doing dba work on an enterprise server watch out if you've only read these 200 pages.

Then, when it comes to actual programming an app against Oracle the book also falls way short of the wrox title. There is not a single example in the book that actually demostrates how to create a FORM (remember those?) that links to Oracle. Published in 1999 the code is also behind, with large sections of the book dedicated to DAO, RDO, and ODBC Direct. And, as others have stated, the code describing the use of stored procedures is either wrong or out of date.

If you want to read a long book, get this one. There are some good, clear descriptions of the theory behind cursors and the mechanics of the various middleware connection layers. If you actually want to develop against Oracle, get the wrox book!

Oracle owns the relational database server market and Microsoft owns the desktop market. Visual Basic is the language of choice for the WinTell development world. One would expect dozens of books available to support this paradigm, but there are not.

I recommend this book to everyone who must use Oracle. The first 10 chapters summarize Oracle better then Oracle summarizes Oracle. Snowdon assumes that the reader is familiar with SQL Server, but he does not assume ANY Oracle knowledge. By the time this book was available I had already written two production class programs for Oracle without the benefit of experienced Oracle DBA's to help me. This book would have saved me hours of frustration had it been available.

I have just purchased Dov Trietsch's, "Visual Basic Oracle 8 Programmer's Reference," so I cannot compare the two.

If you are going to survive in an Oracle environment, you will need to learn PL/SQL, Oracle's extended SQL programming language for triggers and stored procedures. Snowdon has an excellent introduction, but the definitive source is Steven Feurerstein's "Oracle PL/SQL Programming" by O'Reilly and Associates. I DO NOT recommend any of the Osborne books on Oracle, even though they are Oracle's vendor of choice. Oracle makes a big chunk of its money in consulting fees and, in my opinion, the Osborne documentation protects that revenue stream.

The book is thorough and well designed. It is the absolute best coverage of VB and Oracle in one book. This book has saved countless hours of development time. Almost every aspect of development involving VB and Oracle are covered in enough detail for the beginner while being comprehensive enought for the experienced user.

Some of the data objects covered have been updated by Microsoft since the books publication. The best example is that you can now retrieve parameters from a package in Oracle with the latest RDO. In the authors defense, it is impossible to keep up with technology advances. As with any book, if it references a limitation, check the vendor's web site for any updates.

The hardest part about using the book is getting it back from other developers in the shop.

This book is a must have for the serious VB / Oracle developer.

This book is really the vb programmer's guide to Oracle. This is a good general reference but it does not get into depth on visual basic side. THis book would be good for someone with little knowledge of how Oracle works.

If we had had this book six months ago, we could have saved ourselves tremendous headaches and months of lost time.

The book is very well strucured and explains the intricacies of Oracle to the uninitiated (we came from SQL Server) in a very readable way. It covers everything you need to get to work with Oracle (which is quite a bit), with emphasis on the most important point: the interface between VB and Oracle and how to optimize it.

I wish all books on computing would be this well structured, comprehensive and practical!

As a "junior developer", I have been given my biggest VB project yet. I was a little nervous when we decided to use ORACLE for the DBMS, since I had never worked with ORACLE before. I needed a reference that specifically covered VB programming with ORACLE. This book is EXACTLY what I needed, and the only one I could find. Half of the book gives an overview of ORACLE (designed for developers who haven't worked with ORACLE), the other half covers the various connection methods (ADO/RDO). This book has already saved me a great deal of time. It's well written, with great code examples. I only wish there had been someway to include codes samples on a CD ROM. Overall - TERRIFIC.

This book is fantastic for moderate to experienced VB programmers that have a need to use Oracle. I don't know what I would have done without it. Because the ADO and Oracle do not mesh perfectly, there are definitely some tricks to know, especially for using stored procedures (a must in any enterprise level application). Like I said, a great resource.

I'm relatively experienced with VB and accessing databases although I had never connected to an Oracle DB. With a new project starting, I had to come up to speed. This book showed me how much I didn't know what I thought I knew. It felt like it was written just for me - from the perspective of someone who has been happily accessing jet db's and thinking the every db works that way. Now I understand how the "big boys" work and this information has proved invaluable in my project. Highly recommened.