7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
He's so smart; We're so stupid, November 17, 1998
By A Customer
This review is from: Oracle8 Administration and Management (Paperback)
Each time I pick up this book I put it down feeling stupid and less confident for having read it. Since I'm an honors university grad, have a doctorate and have 7 successful Oracle consulting jobs at Fortune 500 companies under my belt, I don't think my failure to get good information out of this book is my fault.
If you already know the topics in this book, you might say, "Yup, he's covered it."
But people who are out to learn a topic will find it's similar to wanting to learn to drive and having someone say, "Oh it's easy, just press the gas to go and use the wheel to steer." Sorry, but there's more to it, as anyone who's learned to drive will recall. People who are reading this book to learn will feel frustrated because the explanations don't contain all the information they need.
I have some specific concerns too. Much of the 800 pages consists of railroad diagrams of commands and brief explanations of optional sub-commands -- information that is available in the Oracle manuals you already have if you've purchased Oracle. The authors of Oracle's manuals have better writing skills, so why anyone would want to read a rehash of the material here? I don't know.
There is some duplication, too. The explanation of PCTFREE and PCTUSED takes up page 142. Then starting on page 208 the same material is presented again. It's a duplicate cut and paste -- the same full page of text appears twice.
The Oracle manuals do a fine job of explaining PCTFREE and PCTUSED, so it's not clear to me why the author felt a need to devote any of the book to this. What people really need is help in determining what values these should be set to in their particular situation (90? 80? 40?). There's no guidence on this at all.
A final note: There is a Suggested Reading section at the end of each chapter, but often the suggestions are articles that were handed out at various Oracle user conferences. How is a typical reader supposed to get these articles? Oh sure, I know, you can sometimes order a set of them after the conference is over, but they tend to be quite expensive and most of the "articles" are just PowerPoint slides, making it hard to justify the purchase. So is the author really being helpful in providing these references? Or is he just showing off by listing obscure references that 99% of readers will not have? And isn't this just a setup for making readers feel inadequate? (Suggesting they refer to an article, but knowing most of them won't have access to it....)
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Thorough coverage with a few flaws, July 21, 1998
By A Customer
This review is from: Oracle8 Administration and Management (Paperback)
Once you get past the author's ego (all the wonderful applications he's created or the tests he's created), the book is extremely thorough. But when I gave his test of what a DBA should know to the other seven "full charge" DBAs in my office, none of them passed (which also shows he believes he is the smartest DBA in the world).
He might be smart, but he's not organized. When I read the chapter on table administration, he started with railroad diagrams of the syntax. This was followed by a jumble of clauses in no particular order (not even in the same order as shown in the railroad diagrams). I would have preferred to see clauses grouped at least by the type of table being created (partition table, index table, etc).
There are minor errors in the code printed in the book (like NVL() changing to NIL()). That's to be expected. But when you go to the CD-ROM to get the "real" source code (supposedly without the errors), you find that the source code ! is in PDF (Adobe Acrobat) format rather than in editable ASCII text. That means you have to manually type the scripts in yourself. In fact, the only value in the CD is that it contains demo versions of software (which the author helped write) that you are expected to purchase.
However, in spite of its downside, the book is chock full of useful information ... if you want to spend the time organizing it yourself. It's obvious the author simply patched in Oracle8 changes to an Oracle7 book.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
3.0 out of 5 stars
A good reference source, December 10, 1999
This review is from: Oracle8 Administration and Management (Paperback)
Oracle8 Administration and Management is a good source of reference especially for experienced DBAs and those moving from earlier platforms. As an experienced DBA and an OCP in both Oracle7 and Oracle8, my opinion is that the book is targeted towards intermediate to senior DBAs.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
