Customer Reviews

Oracle9i DBA 101

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Upon reading the reviews of this book, I can understand how some have mistaken what the book was truly meant for based on its title. The book should be titled more along the lines of "Your First Job Working As a DBA: 101" or "Your Job as an Oracle DBA from Jr. to Sr. Is This the Job for You ?", you get the point.

In the section of the book titled "Getting Started", the authors explain how this book developed from a workshop called "DBA 101: A Refresher Course", and they had been DBA's since 1991. It was designed to help others who were DBA's. The 9i certification course consists of four exams and uses four books. Those books teach Oracle and prepare you for the certifications. They cover being an Oracle Certified Database Administrator (Jr. DBA) to an Oracle Certified Professional (Sr. DBA). You may be studying for the individual exams after you completed the course and have no experience or you may be attempting to apply for a job as a Jr. DBA, which are few and far between, you need to understand what is going to be expected of you. If you have a job as a Jr. DBA, you may need a refresher on what you need to work on in order to become a Sr. DBA. Whether your skill set is entry level or intermediate, this book does an excellent job of taking the important information from ALL FOUR books and consolidating it into one book that describes the job duties of a Jr. or Sr.DBA.

This is NOT a study guide for the exams nor is it for anyone trying to learn Oracle. It answers the question of what a DBA really does and all of the duties you should be aware of that you need to gear up for if you are new and looking for a DBA position. Only real life experience can truly prepare you for what really goes on day to day in the life of a DBA. That's where this book comes in handy. This book is EXTREMELY useful only AFTER you have taken the Oracle course or have some experience. Use it to get a jumpstart as to what will be expected of you to know when you get that first job so you can get a head start and hopefully advance more quickly. It answers the questions that an aspiring DBA has and it provides you with a refresher course if you are a DBA so you can improve upon your skills.

Take note that Oracle does make changes to its software so you want to do research on different procedures as this book was written in 2002. However, as for the topics it covers it is GREAT ! !

Rather tedious reading because of so much obvious padding to get the page count up to 500... I would estimate that there are 200 pages of real content here. There is a long explanation of what actions the trigger on a gun initiate, in order to be sure we understand what an Oracle "Trigger" is through a long analogy. This is a typical example of where a text is padded out to a paragraph to explain a concept that could have been done in a sentence. Authors should respect the reader's time and attention. Some of the coverage is very thin and the seams show on the revision for the 9i. We I reviewed the book and noted the highlighted passages, I realized how thin in content this actually was.

Still a good first read for a new DBA, but the Wessler or Dawes or even Ault are better, more detailed and ultimately more useful.

As a programmer with experience in MS SQL Serer, this book appealed as a first introduction to Oracle. Unfortunately, too much space has been dedicated to complicated and unnecessary detail. For example, early chapters go to great detail of setting up the SQL Plus utility, interesting, but frequently I found myself skipping page after page that I didn't need as a beginner and there's no way I would remember. As a beginners' book, it's disappointing to find installation of the database pushed all the way back to chapter 7, and with that the chapter starts by saying that a full coverage of installations is beyond the scope of this book! If installing the database is not important for beginners, what is? Final word, this book isn't for beginners.

There are many other better books out there for beginners. Just because this say's DBA 101, doesn't mean it is for beginners. reading this book was very difficult as I had NO knowledge of Oracle and it was very confusing. After reading other books, that are far better, then picking this one back up then I could understand, But why? getting knowledge from other books, you won't need this one. Lot's of definitions of oracle parameters, Not enough real examples and very logical in nature, not practical at all

Comprehensive, great references, good examples, easy to understand explanations of views and tables necessary to
be a competent dba. Five chapters in and I haven't caught
a spelling error...and that says a LOT for any tech related
book these days...

As an aspiring Oracle DBA (I am currently an Oracle PL/SQL programmer), I found the insights that this book provided invaluable. It is a great overview of what it takes to be an Oracle DBA and what your day-to-day tasks would likely be. I only wish that it covered certification in more detail, but it does go into a lot of detail in many other areas. I especially liked the installation details, and crisis/backup/restore management.
I am curious as to what an experienced DBA would think of this book, but will have to wait until I am one.