Customer Reviews

Oracle9i Web Development

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This is one of the most poorly written and disappointing books I have ever come across.

The information is covered in a strange haphazard way, almost misleading in its treatment of topics. e.g. the 3rd chapter has a section titled 'Tuning Application Modules', where the author manages to cover tuning (1) CGI/Perl apps (2) PL/SQL, PSP apps (3) JSP/JServ apps AND (4) the use of Explain Plan, Tkprof tools etc ... ALL in a about 6 pages or so.

Soon after in the book, he then devotes nearly 50 pages to (hold your breath) .. HTML !! But wait, another 40 pages of (.. guess .. nope, wrong again) JAVASCRIPT !!! The romp continues with a near 90 page foray into XML, followed by (and you'd never guess this one .. ) wireless development. Under 40 pages to that last topic of course, after all - understanding what 9iAS has to offer in way off wireless development should be a breeze once you've devoted 50 pages to mastering HTML, right ?

And Java ? Yes, it makes its appearance in a chapter all by itself (c'mon, you caught on that trend by now hopefully). On the 4th page, the section 'J2xE' begins with this nugget -
" .. J2EE is simpler than I envisioned: J stands for Java, which you probably guessed. 2 stands for Java platform 2, which includes versions 1.2 and later of the JDK. Version 2 is currently the latest and greatest version of Java. The first E stands for Enterprise or .. "
And so it continues all the way to the end of that paragraph.

I greatly regret not checking the other reviews before I bought the book. As such, I have myself to thank for wasting my money. I hope you will not make the same mistake.

Book Review by Linda Ruff on Oracle 9i Web Development by Bradley D. Brown, published by Oracle Press

Brad Brown has authored several very good books on Oracle related topics and this book, promises to be a "masterpiece" on developing Oracle based Web applications.
After my reading the book in order to write a review for a technical publication, I can tell perspective buyers not to hesitate in punching this superb publication. If you are considering a book on developing Oracle based web applications, look no further, this is it. But if that does not convince you, here are the details:

To start off, there is a 21 page contents listing, preceded by a concise two page "Contents at a Glance" that steer the reader through this incredible publication.

The introduction was extremely helpful to me, especially the section on "How the Book is Organized" because it has a good summary of each chapter and it helped me write this book review. Another point about appreciating a good introduction and contents is allowing the perspective reader the best opportunity to make a good selection when shopping for a book.

A delightful feature in the introduction is "Components Needed" which lists all software, including versions, to install to make everything in the book work. How often have you been trying to work through a technical software problem only to find out the documentation or manuals did not list what was required? Maybe a better question to ask, is how often do they thoroughly list what is required to make development work?

Another good feature in the introduction is the Product Usage Diagram in a Consumers Report type symbols that list the "strengths and weaknesses of different Oracle products, languages, and tools", most of which are covered in this book. Great feature!

The book is well organized and divided into five parts: Getting Prepared, Core Concepts, Modules, Oracle Tools and Ongoing Support.

Getting Prepared covers Architecture, Installation, iAS Configuration and Tuning, Uptime and Disaster Planning.
The architecture of Oracle 9iAS is "radically different" and the author covers installation of the entire iAS suite. In fact, since Oracle 9iAS has so many features and product rewrites, this book is not a revision as planned,, but was entirely rewritten. The author recommend reading the installation chapter before ever touching disks and to cover the configuration chapters

I liked the "Quick Tuning and configuration Answers" in Chapter three, but I like the chapter as a whole because it covered where iAS gets it's information, understanding directives, configuration file structure, ports, configuring and starting/stopping Apache, global directives, managing and configuring modules, security and authentication.
Real Application Clusters (RAC) Technology, 24X7 Uptime and disaster plan importance round out the first five chapters and part I of the book.

Core Concepts starts out with Tips & Techniques on HTML, then covers JavaScript development and comparison to PL/SQL. Next is a long chapter on XML and XSQL, followed by wireless markup language (WML). The author gives us his wireless PL/SQL toolkit in the chapter on Wireless development, complete with code and examples on how to use it. The chapter on migrating from OAS to iAS will be quite helpful when upgrading, especially since it explains what you "really need." Built in PL/SQL packages is a very good chapter on demonstrating how the new packages can be used with or apart from iAS. The final chapter in Part II is on the aspects of security on protecting Oracle9iAS directories, application-level security, authentication, encryption, digital signatures and using Oracle Advanced Security Option (ASO).

The third part of the book is on Java and PL/SQL Cartridge modules with lots of code examples with explanation of what the request, response,, session and , out objects do. There are over 150 pages on just these two modules and some of the topics covered are: Java for the PL/SQL developer, JavaServer Pages, JDeveloper, PL/SQL Server Pages and PL/SQL Optimization.

Designer for Web code starts off the fourth part of the book which goes into detail on form layout, LOV components, packages, events and JavaScript. Using Oracle developer is covered after Oracle9iAS Portal, and something I wanted to learn more about, Internet File System (IFS) is also in part four. Web and database caching completes that part of the book, along with using Oracle Enterprise Manager(OEM).

The last part covered is Ongoing support, which consists of trouble shooting, debugging code, iAS logs and a two chapters high on my list for search engine ranking and online searching.

Throughout the book there are tips, notes and numerous references to interesting and helpful web sites and the entire book is well-organized and superbly formatted.

In closing, I wonder, how does Brad continue to produce high quality Oracle publications? The answer is in his acknowledgements, as Brad shares a little about his family and business partner's contribution, then he lists biographies of all those who contributed to the publication. Thank you Brad, this is truly a "wealth of knowledge and experience."

In case you wonder what I base my statements on, I have been developing and supporting oracle applications for over 15 years (forget exactly how many) and have written numerous technical articles myself, as well as doing a regular book review for an the Rocky Mountain Oracle User Group (RMOUG).

Buy this book only if you feel a need to purchase [$]/ 1000 pages worth of "useless" I highly encourage you to read the documentation on the oracle website instead. This book is literally a thousand page overview. It wastes hundreds of pages making vague suggestions about how to code in HTML, CSS, and Javascript. It attempts to discuss every topic that is remotely related to web development and conveys almost nothing useful. I have to marvel at the profound vacuity of this book. The people who wrote glowing reviews of this book either actually read something else, or they are being paid to say nice things about this ....

Reading the other reviews for this book, I guess I might have different ideas of what a book called "Web Development" should contain, and different ideas of what constitutes useful content in any book. The title of my review is probably a bit harsh, but it's something of an in-joke with a friend from an earlier job. His cubicle was full of technical books, some of which bore the designation "This Book [is bad]" on the cover in ballpoint pen to save others the trouble of asking if the book was worth borrowing.

Regarding this book: I think the author was paid by the number of pages his book takes up. If you grab the book in your hands and rip off the first quarter-inch of pages, you will only be removing the introductions, summaries, dedications, forewords, contents, gushing about the guy's wife and kids, acknowledgments, personal histories, etc. And the book will still have 1,116 pages.

And for some reason, the book devotes whole chapters to things like planning for 24x7 uptime, disaster recovery, clustering, installing the server in the first place, etc. What on earth do those things have to do with web development? Sure, those things need to happen in most shops, and somebody has to do them, but it shouldn't be the web developer unless he's the only guy that works there, in which case he won't be affording anything from Oracle.

The book does feature whole chapters on HTML, Javascript, Java, and XML, most of which start from the "this is a mouse" level and work their ways up. Most of this I skipped, although the XML chapter does contain a lot of good information about how Oracle's XML-ish tools work.

I finally gave up during the chapter on Portal, which was totally random. They don't start with an overview of terminology or anything. It's like they just walked in the front door and started pointing at whatever was close by, and telling a story about each thing, without regard to context or which concepts should come first.

There is probably some useful content in this book, depending on what you're hoping to find, but chances are good you will spend more time looking for your desired information than you will reading it.

My conclusion: This book [is bad]. Your mileage may vary.

UPDATE: After reading this review, the author offered to refund the money I spent on the book, since I obviously didn't like it. I thought that was uncommonly fair and indicative of a good sport.

Most of the books I bought is good.........except this one, I should read more reviews before buying it.......The problem is the market does not has too many book about Oracle 9i Web development, however this one won't help you much anyway. Most of my experience with this book is already expressed by Kendric Beachey. no need to say much.....just dont waste your money........don't want to have a second victim.

I don't now what author is trying to say about Oracle9i Web Development in this book. Don't deserve even a single star.

I sincerely believe that Brad did an expert job on the book.
With hands-on examples and configuration parameters that will help you to be up and running, you can't easily beat this expert's advice from other sources.
I feel this book is like having a guru sit beside you and instructing you, while you go ahead and do the coding.

If you read segments of this book, I can undertstand how you might think it's not a valuable book. However, this book was written thinking that people would read it cover-to-cover. If you pick it up and read it as a reference book, it will have little value. If you're intention is to learn about Web development from start to finish, this book is for you. If not, it's not for you.

Brad Brown has long been recognized as a leader in Oracle Web development, and this text further convinces me of his extraordinary skill in explaining complex Oracle web topics.

While the text is a door-stop at 1,100 pages, it is full of useful reference material that is not availible anywhere else.

The example are clear and well-written, and desite the bulk of this text, it is easy to fo0llow. Highly recommended.

I am reading this book and I think it is interesting and helpful.