Guide to Oracle 10g

This Oracle 10g book by Morrison & Morrison is an exceptional learning tool. It is very well written, and makes effective use of graphics. The figures used in this book are relevant to the text, and really help enforce what the author is trying to communicate to the reader. However, the CD-ROM discs that are included with the book do not allow the user to install a working copy of the database. After installing the software, it is not possible to log-on to SQL Plus. Even after trying to configure an Oracle Listener and Service Name, it is not possible to log-on to the database with the credentials that I created and the host name listed in the tnsnames.ora file. It would be nice if the book or the software provided a solution for this issue.

I use this book as 1 of 2 texts I require in my Database undergrad course (the other being a database concepts book). I find my students really like the tutorial approach and learn a little bit of each of the major aspects of the Oracle DBMS and Developer components: SQL+, PL/SQL, Oracle Forms and Reports. There is more material in the book than we can cover in a semester which provides a value-added for the student after the course is over. Also, the tutorials and cases present realistic applications for the student to master. I recommend this book to anyone faced with learning the scope of important features of the Oracle DBMS.

I am currently using this for my advanced DBMS course. I haven't finished reading this book, but so far it is very good. The examples are quite thorough and easy to understand. My only complaints are the index (some things are hard to find), and no info on the import/ export utility, or indepth info on SQLLDR. Otherwise, it's a great book. By the way, the reason I titled my review "Straight Gangsta" is b/c of the version's alpha-numeric tag. Some may tell you that the 'g' stands for grid, but the truth is that it stands for 'gansta!'. The previous version was 9i ('i' because it was ill); but the additional features in version 10 moved it up to 'gansta' status. If Oracle 10g was a flavor, it would be ganstalicious. :) Anywho, I digress. Great book if you plan to use Oracle 10g. Peace out.

For a textbook, this book isn't all that bad. I used this for my database administration courses for college, and it was written in a way that made databases very easy to understand.