Customer Reviews

Teach Yourself Oracle8i on Windows NT in 24 Hours (Sams Teach Yourself...in 24 Hours)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

I was initially reluctant to buy/read this book, because in the past I have been bitten by horrible SAMS 24 hour series books (like the one on Visual Basic by Greg Perry and Sanjaya Hettihewa). So I was sort of biased against this kind of books, considering them too basic for a senior IT professional. This book has been a pleasant surprise. It starts easy, but the thread of discussion soon switches and very advanced topics, such as Fail Safe and parallel server are exhaustively covered. The book is precise and accurate, and explores the NT specificity, teaching how to tune the operating system so that Oracle can run better. I have been an Oracle DBA in OpenVMS/Unix environments, and I could get up to speed to Oracle/NT relatively quickly, thanks to this book. We need lots of books like this one.

I am an experienced Windows NT system administrator but new to Oracle. I started my new responsibilites as an Oracle DBA on Windows NT and this book has helped me a lot in coming up to speed quickly. I even learnt a few things about Windows NT along the way.

The 5-star reviews are wrong. This is not a good book. There are no useful examples. The installation information is non-informative. All screen shots are from Oracle 8.1.3 Beta. Coming from an SQL Server background, this book was a waste of $30. Unfortunately, I don't have a suggestion for a better book.

It just shows you how to install, setup, and using its utilities, but does not teach you how to build or design any practical databases.

Teach yourself Oracle8i goes on for page after page with charts of technical data and facts without ever explaining how to use these. In the creating a database section, for example, charts of Oracle parameters are merely listed in table form without any explanation about what they mean or how to decide upon what to use in any given implementation scenario. Difficult to read. We need teach yourself people who can write good English prose. No organization. Useless! Besides, the book uses an outdated Beta 3 version of Oracle8i.

Surprisingly the flaws are on the Oracle side and not NT. The NT side of the book is solid and if you are learning Oracle on a NT box this is a great help; on the other hand, there are Oracle errors BUT no worries, if you check the Tables you will easily find them even IF you have no Oracle experience. I like the 24 hour series and this book is no exception, I just it had been better checked; but on the other hand, at this price, a few flaws seem petty to point out.

We have found this book to be very useful in our project, especially the tuning sections of the book. Our project involved migrating all our Oracle databases from UNIX to Windows NT and we were not really comfortable with all the issues. This book helped me and all the members of my team in understanding what we need to watch out for when working with Windows NT and how to efficiently use Oracle on Windows NT.

It has been a lifesaver for our project. This book will always have a special place in our collection and we find ourselves referencing it daily.

This book helped me a lot in my attempt to move from Oracle on UNIX to Oracle on Windows NT. It contains everything I wanted to know about making the transition smooth. The Windows NT focus in this book is really good.

Overall, the information in the book is accurate but there are many instances where they tried to show pictures to lead you through a complicated process (like installation) and these graphics are just totally wrong. The book also focuses on administering O8i through older methods and just barely touches on the newer configuration programs.

Sadly I found this book to be next to useless. Learn Oracle in 24 hours, HAH. First of all, this book wastes more time talking about NT than it does about actually installing Oracle and connecting clients. In fact it provides only an explanation of the GUI install wizard and only a beta at that. By the way everything explained here is available in the Oracle documentation. If you install Oracle according to this book don't plan on using the client from which to work. If you get lucky you will connect, if not this book provides no help. As a matter of fact I have found very little information on Net8 connections in any book. Well I could go on, but don't waste your money if you are new to Oracle.