Expert One-On-One Oracle: Programmin Techniques and Solutions for Oracle 7.3, 8.0.X and 8i (Through to 8.1.7)

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.

As I mention in the title, I rate this book from a developer's perspective not a DBA's: My Oracle experience is usually Java/J2EE/JDBC and little PL/SQL programming.When I first saw this book, I thought it to be a DBA reference book. Then I started picking up chapters and reading: I was amazed with the quality of information and suprised how blindly I before was working with the Oracle database. Why my query was so slow? why my index didn't help? Why transaction isolation level was so critical? and so on. I found answers to my questions in this book.In this book, Tom explains internals of Oracle database, detailing and emphasizing critical points, and helping us to understand how we can use the Oracle database correctly and efficiently. Topics range from DBA topics like configuration, data loading, partioning to those which programmers can benefit as well: Optimization, indexes, transactions, tables etc.This book is not a book about SQL, database design or database theory. It's all about getting the best out of an Oracle database. I strongly recommend it to any programmer developing software interacting with an Oracle database. SQL, general database knowledge, and basic Oracle knowledge is almost mandatory for reading (One should know what trigger, view, transaction, schema, index etc. are before starting the book).With this book, "Expert One on One" series of Wrox seems to make a very good start.

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.

Tom Kyte offers up a world of expertise on the many aspects of an Oracle database. The content of the book is drawn from years of real-world scenarios he has encountered. He offers up a problem, then rolls up his sleeves and gets to solving it - the right way! I guarantee that you will find problems of your own, mirrored almost to a tee, in this book.At times he will talk over your head - so make sure that you have a good understanding of SQL, PL/SQL and some other language like C or Java. Otherwise, you will get lost quickly. This book is not for greenhorns.Bottom line here: Tom knows his theory, but unlike so many other authors, he isn't so concerned about discussing theory, as he is concerned about how that theory applies to solving real-world problems. So, he not only understands the toolkit, but how to use the tools wisely.Do yourself and your organization a favor and get this book! Check out asktom.com to get a sense of his straight-forward style.

If you are an Oracle programmer, or a DBA that works with programmers (and has to tell them all the things that they are supposed to know), this the best book you can buy. There are books by people that can program, and books by writers who can write but don't quite understand what they are writing about and there are a million other faults a book could have, but this book has none of them. Tom Kyte is at the very top of Oracle programming and he is a teacher who wants you to be able the do the same thing. Every topic in this book "reaches the ground". Tom starts from setting up your environment, and takes you through many high level exercises, showing you how to make it work, every single step of the way. He is teacher like W. Richard Stevens and Steve Rago. There is too much to describe it all but as an example, there is a 70 page section on writing a C-Based external procedure. It starts with six pages of setting up your environment (listener, schema, server, exproc program, libraries), then the code in PL/SQL and C, how to make it, how to install it, how to test it, and ends with the answer to every error message you might get if you make a mistake. The applications discussed are not just "interesting" and they don't just "work". There is a recurring theme in all of the applications and that is this: they scale. Tom has sections on bind variable, and then more on bind variables, and then more on bind variables, until the idea is branded on you that a "working" application is trivial unless it scales. You aren't writing code for developers, but for end users who may do millions of transactions a day; that is the kind of code you want. If you already know everything, you will learn more, but either way Tom's projects are complete, and well documented; you can learn this. This is great book, you will read all 1200 pages.