Oracle and Visual Basic Developer's Handbook (Paperback)

by Jim Fedynich (Author), Jenny Besaw (Author), Mark Tomlinson (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Oracle is a corporate database and Visual Basic is a programming language used by developers to create database applications. This text explains how to use Visual Basic with Oracle. The companion CD contains all the source code from the book and sample database applications.

Product Details

• Paperback: 803 pages
• Publisher: Sybex Inc (May 15, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0782124763
• ISBN-13: 978-0782124767
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.6 x 2.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,536,113 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars If you do not use OO4O, this is not the book for you, June 1, 2000

By	Eric L. Ma (Berkeley Heights, NJ USA) - See all my reviews

This book should be renamed "Oracle Objects for OLE (OO4O) Developer's Handbook". It details the latest and greatest features of OO4O, including support for Oracle REF's, LOB's, and AQ. However, coverage of ADO/OLE DB is very weak, with only 7% of the book (the final chapter out of 14) dealing with Oracle's OLE DB Provider and ADO. It also lacks specifics (features and limitations) on Oracle's ODBC drivers, and practically there is no mention in the book of Microsoft's ODBC and OLE DB products. Microsoft MTS is only briefly mentioned in the OLE DB Provider chapter, but no detail is given on how to set up the database and web server to use MTS.

If you want to get the hard-to-find information on connection to Oracle from ASP pages, you will be disappointed again. Although there are 2 chapters on connection pooling and transactional control, they focus on the OO4O implementation. You will not find info on the best practice for achieving scalability using ODBC/OLE DB connection pooling, or how to deal with the pros/cons of storing ADO connection/recordset objects in session/application variables, etc.

The level of this book is at the beginner level, although the back-cover has it as intermmediate/advanced. A major portion of the book is spent repeatedly explaining what each line of code does, even though it is obvious towards the later chapters of the book. There are other types of inefficient use of pages such as instructions how to place a visual control on a VB form, i.e., details for how to use the VB IDE. People reading this book should be assumed to have basic knowledge of VB, even though they may come from a PL/SQL background.

To repeat, if you code OO4O, this is the best book on the market (there are only 3 other VB/Oracle books available, if I may add). If you do ADO/OLE DB/ODBC, this book is not going to help a bit. The OLE DB chapter I mentioned earlier is almost a rehash of the User's Guide that comes with the OLE DB Provider. For developers in the ADO/OLE DB camp, I recommend the 2 books from Wrox Press (Professional ADO 2.5 RDS Programming with ASP 3.0 and VB Oracle 8 Programmer's Reference).

4.0 out of 5 stars Great for OO4O, not so for ADO, etc., June 2, 2000

By	A. Bagchee (Orlando, FL) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The book should have been titled "OO4O Programming with VB" and that'd merit 4.5 stars!The authors (all being Oracle Tech and Support Analyst) do a very good job of describing the workings of OO4O. While a section is dedicated to ADO, ODBC, and OLE DB, this book is primarily for OO4O users-to-be. Since I was looking to use ADO and OLE-DB, I found this book interesting but useless (only 1 example). What tickled my fancy (and I am still reading it!) is the book "Visual Basic for Oracle 8" by Dov Trietsch (Wrox) which does an unbiased treatment.