Professional Oracle 8i Application Programming with Java, PL/SQL and XML (Paperback)

~ Michael Awai (Author), Matthew Bortniker (Author), John Carnell (Author), Kelly Cox (Author), Daniel O'Connor (Author), Mario Zucca (Author), Sean Dillon (Author), Thomas Kyte (Author), Ann Horton (Author), Frank Hubeny (Author), Glenn E. Mitchell II (Author), Kevin Mukhar (Author), Gary Nicol (Author), Guy Ruth Hammond (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Suitable for any developer or manager who works on the Oracle platform, Professional Oracle 8i Application Programming with Java, PL/SQL, and XML is an excellent guide to the tools and programming techniques you'll need for successful enterprise development using today's Oracle.

Unless you buy an armful of books on current Oracle tools and technologies, you won't likely find as comprehensive a tour as this. First off, the authors are masters at using Oracle tools for high-end enterprise development, including PL/SQL (its proprietary SQL language) and Java. Developers and IT managers will appreciate the clear descriptions of relevant tools in the Oracle arsenal (including Developer and JDeveloper). Business Components for Java (BC4J), which simplify the use of Enterprise JavaBeans with Oracle databases and JSP, are also explained succinctly.

The emphasis is on server-side programming, with all features supported in Oracle, like stored procedures (and objects), written in both PL/SQL and Java. This book excels at showing the nitty-gritty details, with screen shots revealing the actual Oracle tools in action. As for using Enterprise JavaBeans, readers learn two possible methods: with standard EJB, and with BC4J components created with JDeveloper. A sample for a restaurant finder application will help you try your hand at using both approaches.

The discussion of Oracle's extensive XML support, which will be useful for taking advantage of this popular standard for real-world projects, is very strong. (Material on the emerging Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and WML built with XML/XLST brings the book absolutely up to date.) A longer case study provides an ambitious example of enterprise Oracle at work. This Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system (with support for call centers) demonstrates a true n-tiered architecture built around Oracle.

For developers and IT managers alike, this authoritative tour on the best of the Oracle platform is really a must-have for anyone serious about development. It proves not only that Oracle is a great database platform, but also that it's ready to run the entire enterprise through powerful Internet and component-based tools. --Richard Dragan

Topics covered:

• History of Oracle
• Introduction to PL/SQL
• Overview of Oracle tools (including Forms, Reports, Portal, Designer, Oracle 8i, and JDeveloper)
• SQLJ and JavaServer Pages (JSP)
• Enterprise JavaBeans on the Oracle platform
• XML support in Oracle
• Enterprise Application Design (EAD) and n-tiered architectures on the Oracle platform
• Oracle database fundamentals (including data dictionaries, indices, and object/relational design)
• Oracle Net8 for scalability
• Designer 6i (case study for an online course-registration database)
• PL/SQL tutorial (including PL/SQL Server Pages and the Web Toolkit for Web programming)
• Case study for an online stock-tracker application
• Java stored procedures
• JDBC tutorial (including APIs, binary fields, connection pooling, and caching)
• SQLJ tutorial
• Introduction to EJB
• Oracle performance tuning
• Oracle Business Components for Java (BC4J)
• Case study for a discussion database using PL/SQL and Java
• Search engines with Oracle interMedia
• XML fundamentals and Oracle
• Case study for a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) enterprise system
• The Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)

Product Description

Oracle Corporation has broadened its development platform, integrating open standards such as Java and XML into the heart of the Oracle 8i database. This extended programming environment continues to exploit the qualities of scalability, reliability and efficiency of the world's most successful data management software, but at the same time it provides new challenges and opportunities to programmers.

This book shows you how to develop enterprise PL/SQL applications exploiting Java and XML, and how technologies such as EJBs can be moved to the 8i database. You'll work through case studies using a mix of both familiar and unfamiliar tools and languages, showing you how the various programming approaches can enhance each other.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 1275 pages
• Publisher: Wrox Press; 1 edition (December 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1861004842
• ISBN-13: 978-1861004840
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.2 x 2.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,675,587 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Overall a fine book, even with obvious weaknesses, February 15, 2001

By	Eric L. Ma (Berkeley Heights, NJ USA) - See all my reviews

Like any other recent Wrox titles, this one contains jewels and pretenders. On the bright side, quite a few of the Java and XML chapters are strong, and I particularly liked the ones on EJB, PL/SQL-Java inter-operation, and SOAP. There is also a chapter at the end on setting up the environment to run the book samples. On the not so bright side, the PL/SQL chapters are disappointing, because they cover either fundamental stuff that anyone who calls themselves an Oracle developer should know, or irrelevant technologies like OAS PL/SQL cartridge and PSP (huh?). The chapters on JDBC and connection pooling wasted 60% of the pages by talking about the basic JDBC API and showing the details of a connection pool manager class, rather than talking more about Oracle's extensions to the JDBC 2.0 standard and optional packages API. Finally, there is one glaring omission - MTS (I am talking about the Microsoft stuff here), although it does contain an informative chapter on ASP/Oracle. One more thing: this book covers Oracle8i Release 2, not the latest 3.

With everything considered, you may still want to own this title, as it is the only book under the sun that covers all (well, almost) current distributed programming technologies that interface with Oracle (both J2EE and Windows DNA). It also covers promising Oracle proprietary technologies such as interMedia, BC4J, and Portal (aka WebDB).

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars 12 Authors, 1200 pages; uneven at best (but some good), June 7, 2001

By	P. H PICOT (Haymarket, VA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book has something to offer, the question is, can you find it? There are at least 12 authors, some brilliant, and some that should take up another line of work. The sections are not associated with author's names or initials, so you have read the sections to figure out if that section's author was good. The word "I" is used a lot, but it may not be the same "I" as the last time you saw it. "Unix Power Tools" (Amazon) has a better format for this type of work; we know Tom Kyte is smart, but which is his stuff? The section on database fundamentals is awfull. A minor gripe, all the refernces to other texts (and there are few) are to other texts by this publisher (wrox). If you are looking to learn a subject, this is not the place. For instance, JSP and Oracle are covered much better by Hougland and Tavistock in "Core JSP" (available at Amazon). If you have a complex project that happens to be like one of the examples, you could easily get your money's worth out of this book, but you would need to be at a level of understanding where you could figure out how to use the good parts. That is, you need to know more than the editors did. If you know what the topic is you want to research, there is a better book on it, and the best will lead you to other books, no matter who publishs them.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A tour of Oracle technologies, January 17, 2002

By	Thomas Paul (Plainview, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

To produce this book, Wrox took twenty expert Oracle developers and had each of them write about their area of expertise. The result is that whether you are a manager, a developer, or a DBA, if you are working with Oracle 8i this book should be on your desk. This book covers virtually every topic that you need to understand about the Oracle 8i development platform. It does not cover each topic completely but it provides a thorough and in most cases sufficient introduction on each topic. For a particular topic of interest you may need an additional book but to get all the information found in this book you would need ten volumes at least. The book opens with an introduction to Oracle 8i and some of its components including Net8 (Oracle's network solution) and Designer 6i (Oracle's development environment). The next section covers PL/SQL and PSP (this is similar to JSP). This is followed by an extensive section covering Java. This section covers JDBC, SQLJ, EJB, and interMedia (Oracle's powerful search tool). The last section covers XML and includes information on DOM and SAX parsers, SOAP, XSL, XSQL, and more. Extensive case studies are scattered throughout the book. Examples show how to use Oracle tools such as BC4J to develop enterprise applications. The book even includes primers on Java and XML. As a tour of all the features of Oracle 8i, this book is without competition.