Customer Reviews

Oracle8i DBA Bible

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

 

 

This is a very good to-the-point manual for all of the basic to intermediate subjects you need to know for Oracle 8i administration. I was surprised at how much was actually contained here relating to all of the different parts of the Oracle RDBMS world. However, it does not make a complete reference (no listing of init.ora parameters for example) and therefore garnered 4 stars from me instead of 5. It is a great book nontheless. Buy it!

This book is not for beginners. Difficult to read. You really need plenty of previous Oracle knowledge to be able to understand this book. If you're a newbie, I suggest you buy another book.

I bought this book when I started out as a DBA. It isn't the only book you'll need, but it has has excellent sections on subjects a DBA really needs to know: export, import, and sql*plus, including line editing commands. It also has more information on sql*loader than you'll find elsewhere. Those chapters alone make it worth buying.

Previous (negative) reviewers are out to lunch on their assessment of this book. If you want a kindergarten primer on how to learn Oracle, then look at Oracle Press book titled "Oracle DBA 101" ("your Oracle career starts here," and guess what, ends here too if that is all you use). News flash: Oracle is difficult to learn, and if all you want (or can manage to learn) are GUI interfaces such as OEM, then "live by the sword, die by the sword" applies to you. If that is the case, skip this book and move straight to the 10g "Oracle Database 2 Day DBA" manual. You will fail miserably as a DBA if all you rely on are the GUI interfaces.

If you don't want to pour through Oracle's documentation, especially the Concepts guide (although at some point in time you should), you need a good third-party book or reference, and this book is it. Does it explain every single detail or feature of Oracle? No, and neither does any other book. If you are new to Oracle and want a good running start on how things work, then "your Oracle career starts here." Further, a lot of what is contained in the book can be applied to 9i as well.

The "perfect" Oracle DBA book has yet to be written, but when asked to recommend a book for learning Oracle from scratch, "Oracle DBA Bible" is by far and away my number one choice.

In my opinion the book is very hit and miss in what it covers. For example, there's a section on Database Space Management that covers how to add space - but it doesn't cover how to reclaim unused space using Truncate/Deallocate. I'd estimate that I find what I need about 50% of the time in this book - but that I have to go to another reference or to TechNet for the other 50%.

I bought the book and hope to understand the web related features of oracle8i. Unfortunately, the authors did not explain concepts well--it is pain to try even the simpliest task following their instruct, because they added many noise(not related information) in the instruction. This is a 1000 page book. First, you need much time to finish it. Second, even you read many pages, you didn't accomplish much, only some very basic stuff that are not explained well (I know someone like to make simple thing complicated). I have much better understanding from oracle online document (some are good). To be fair, it is better than 24 hour book.

The author even has not figure out how to enter the enterprise manager. Look at the page 63 (also other pages): OracleOraOEMManagermentServer [blank] automatic. why automatic didn't start the OEM server? if not enter the OEM, how to logon on to OEM and manager oracle8i from different machines?
(...)

Good book. Talk a little about the XML interface and how to write SQL statements against XML files. Explains the JVM and how Java works within Oracle. Overall helpful reading for the beginner.