11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good for the CD and Exercises, but too little explanation, December 30, 2000
This review is from: Oracle8i for Linux Starter Kit (Book/CD-ROM Package) (Paperback)
I have wanted to get my own copy of Oracle for some time. I looked at the Oracle web site back in May 2000 and noticed that Oracle for Linux was available at a price of several hundred dollars. As much as I wanted a copy, I thought the price was a little steep, so I gave the idea away.
I was therefore, very pleasantly surprised when I came across this book at a far lower price, offering essentially the same deal.
The book consists of 12 Chapters grouped into 3 Sections. These are Getting Started, Fundamentals of Application Development, and Basic Database Administration.
Part 1 covers the installation and configuration of Oracle. If you follow the instructions carefully you shouldn't have any problems installing Oracle. In particular, if you read the System Requirements Section in Chapter 2 you will quickly find out if your system is able to handle the job of running Oracle. In my case I found that I needed a memory upgrade, which I duly carried out before installation. The installation instructions are very detailed and well laid out.
Part 2 of the book deals with Introductory SQL, PL/SQL, Using Java and extending Oracl;e Objects. Part 3 deals with Securing Database Access, Managing Database Space, Database Protection and Basic Tuning.
Each chapter,(except for Chapter 1) consists of 1 to 3 paragraphs of text, possibly with a screen shot or diagram, followed by an exercise based on the previous text. This is followed by some more text followed by an exercise , and so on. Some Chapters have close to 30 exercises. In a lot of cases you cannot really move onto the later exercises till you've done the earlier ones. Even the Installation of Oracle is presented as an exercise.
The typeface used in the book is quite large, and there are nearly 200 Exercises altogether. As a result the explanatory material is quite terse. A little too terse for my liking.
Leaving aside the fact that the book is a bargain for the CD alone, it's best described as an Assignment Book for people learning the Basics of Oracle.Using the book by itself, is the Oracle equivalent of trying to teach yourself C programming by using Kernighan and Ritchie by itself. (Yes I know it can probably be done ... but would would you want to do it that way?)
If you were attending a formal course of lectures in introductory Oracle, this book would be perfect for a bunch of assignments to go with the course. Basically, what the book needs is far more explanation. The explanations given in the book are OK, but they are a little too brief.
I am now looking at buying one or more other books on Oracle to give me a little more background so I don't just know the "how" of Oracle but the "why" as well. (One book I looked at was Oracle Development Unleashed ... that seems to be on the other side of the spectrum ...all chat with very little practical material ... but I digress... ) I am not going to throw this book away, but I badly need some other material to supplement it.
There are a couple of minor errors in the chapters 3 and 4 as well. For example, the location of the initialization file on page 43. It says ... /usr/oraInventory......./initoralin. Thats not where mine was installed. Also there is a minor typo on page 80 where it explains how to use @ command. Also I think there's a bug in the oraenv script in the downloadable zip file. There may well be other errors further on. At the moment I'm reading other Oracle books to try and find out what schemas and instances and user rights etc etc are. I plan to work my way through the remaining chapters when I have a little more background knowledge.
One nice touch is the inclusion of a script so that you can get Oracle to start up with the other system programs when you boot up and shut down nicely when you shutdown.
Notwithstanding its shortcomings I think the book is well worth purchasing. The CD is worth getting and the Exercises, although they are badly in need of some supplementary explanation, have at least given me a list of activities to do with Oracle.
OK so, how do I rate this book ? I am rating it in three parts, each worth a maximum of 5. I give it 5 out of 5 for value for money (mainly because of the CD), I give it 5 out of 5 for the exercises, and I give it 2 out of 5 for its explanation of what is actually happening with all the commands and assignments. I'm not criticizing the quality of the explanations, just the quantity.
OK that's 5 plus 5 plus 2 which is 12. Divide by 3 gives an overall rating of 4.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Definitely for those who learn by doing, September 1, 2000
This review is from: Oracle8i for Linux Starter Kit (Book/CD-ROM Package) (Paperback)
I already own the same book for Oracle8i on Windows NT & was again impressed with the ease of installation & learning. The book is very thorough & shows examples as well as sample problems for most situations. If you learn best by doing, this book is for you. (I would have given 5 stars, but a week after the book's release, the download material is still not available. I used the NT download for the chapter SQL scripts but the \SCRIPTS directory is not available. While it is good that I had to think to make some of the missing material work, it would make it easier to have the download available, especially since I'm not yet a Linux expert.)
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