Expert One on One Oracle [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)

by Thomas Kyte (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Tom Kyte is of a rare breed. To begin, he's technically expert in his subject (administration of and development of applications for Oracle database management systems). What's more (and what distinguishes him from the ranks of the super-competent), he is both able and willing to share his considerable store of wisdom with Oracle users via books like Expert One on One: Oracle. Perhaps the best book about Oracle products ever put out, this book is a model of all aspects of technical publishing: scope, level of detail, clarity of explanations, and quality of examples. It's pretty much certain that you will learn a great deal about Oracle from Kyte's work, and that you'll become more capable in your work as a result of studying this book.

Kyte--it's very tempting to call him an Oracle oracle--seems not to have had to struggle to fit his message into the Wrox Press form, which relies on a running commentary interspersed with code listings and conceptual diagrams. Kyte's commentary is eminently informed and packed with references to the differences between that which is ideal and that which often must be done to accommodate reality. He takes care to explain how little-known pieces of the Oracle environment--and alternative ways of looking at the more familiar ones--solve problems, an approach that leads to elegant, efficient solutions. Kyte boosts his readers across the chasm that separates people who can write applications for Oracle databases from people who understand Oracle databases. --David Wall

Topics covered: Deep wisdom on developing applications for Oracle database management systems, as well as plenty of advice on designing and administering them. There are sections on general design and implementation practices, application architecture, locking and concurrency, transactions and rollbacks, importing and exporting, and lots more of interest to developers.

Product Description
Tom Kyte has a simple philosophy: you can treat Oracle as a black box and just stick data into it or you can understand how it works and exploit it as a powerful computing environment. If you choose the latter course, then you will find that there are few information management problems that you cannot solve quickly and elegantly.

Tom has selected the most important features and techniques and he teaches them in a proof-by-example manner, not only discussing the features available, but also how to implement software using them and indicating the potential pitfalls.

This book covers:
Core database structures and utilities
Performance tuning
Advanced SQL features
Extensibility using C, Java and OR features
Security
Important supplied packages


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Product Details

• Paperback: 1265 pages
• Publisher: Peer Information Inc.; 1 edition (June 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1861004826
• ISBN-13: 978-1861004826
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.4 x 2.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (77 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #510,345 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sage Advice From The Oracle Expert, April 22, 2003

By	P. Heath (Hurst, TX United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This book belongs on every developer, team leader, or DBAs desk that works with Oracle. Kyte has written a masterpiece in advanced Oracle knowledge. He does three things very well in this book: tells you what is important in Oracle, why it is important, and what happens if you do things the wrong way.

Kyte starts out giving the foundations for Oracle databases, the architecture, locking schemes, and table and index considerations. He gives a good treatment of the types of tables and indexes that Oracle offers including the appropriate times to use them and the trade-offs to weigh.

Another key topic that he covers is redo and rollback. These features are handled in a unique way in Oracle, and a lack of understanding can lead to inefficient and incorrect databases and applications.

Armed with the foundations, Kyte then takes the reader through performance tuning and optimizing databases. The best advice in this section is that performance cannot be thrown in at the end. The design decisions for a database will determine how it performs and scales. As he says, "There is no fast=true setting in the init parameters."

Then the book tackles some more advanced features, such as autonomous transactions, dynamic sql, and C and Java extensions for stored procedures. Kyte again gives good advice for when these are appropriate over standard PL/SQL stored procedures.

The size of the book can be intimidating at first glance, but it is pleasant to read. Kyte uses a conversational style rather than a lecturing delivery. This book has a lot to offer, and you won't find yourself tired after reading it.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Oracle Book Ever!, November 14, 2001

By	Arie Picot (Reston, Va) - See all my reviews

I've been developing Oracle applications for many years and have never found a book more resourceful than Tom's. It is packed full of valuable information and is a must have for anyone working with Oracle. It covers many aspects application development from a variety of languages including C, PL/SQL and Java. Most Oracle books are strictly for reference, this book makes for good reference but also is great reading and covers interesting concepts. Chapter 1 in this book is called "Developing Successful Oracle Applications" and is a must read. I recently found that my long running query was not properly using the index I created. I looked in Tom's book and found the answer to my problem under a section called "Why isn't my Index Getting Used?" What more could you ask for? If you're a beginner, intermediate or advanced programmer, or DBA this book is for you.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A treasure-trove of insights!, May 11, 2004

By	M. Loftus - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Expert One-on-One Oracle (Paperback)

This book attempts to cover dozens of subjects, and as such is 1,300 pages in length! Each subject contains gems of insight that had escaped me for some years now. I very much recommend this book if you are going to do any PL/Sql or Java coding. Read a chapter a day and really think about what Tom is saying. If you are really going to write industrial-strength code then you need this book, as Oracle Documentation and Oracle-Press books (I own several) tend to be quite shallow and omit explanations that Tom includes.

If there is a downside, it is that only a few pages are dedicated to any one subject, meaning that while there are many gems, this is not a book to learn the basics from and it does not cover any one subject completely. But then again, I have not seen an Oracle book that does. I wish Tom would write an entire series of books of this quality; I would buy it in a heart-beat!

P.S. Make sure that you get the 2003 version of this book from "APress", as I purchased one from the "New and Used" and got stuck with the 2001 version from "Oracle Press". Apparently Amazon does not require such disclosure.