Ocp: Oracle8i DBA Performance Tuning & NW Admin Sg [With CDROM]

I found this book very informative and covering almost ALL questions covered in the exam. There are 11 Chapters in total (including additional 8i Chapter on CD) , which are all written in an easily to understand way with 20 review questions after each chapter. The topics covered in the last chapter (on CD) can be also found throughtout the relevant chapters, but it a good revision chapter on the new NET8 abilities.There are 3 practice exams within the book and CD, I would advise only attmpting the last Practice exam (toward the end of the book) when you get close to feeling you are ready to sit the real exam. This will give you a good guide as to whether you have learnt enough about NET8.The only negative issue I have in regard to this section of the book is that some of the revision question answers are incorrect, and can be a bit frustrating, on the upside though, if you can determine which are wrong, you must be learning something. The Bonus Exam on the CD is the worst offender, in which has all the wrong answers for the questions.. gave me a bit of a fright when I first saw my score. Also, the questions are a bit to 'theoryish', and I would've like to have seen a few more Situation questions like the real exam uses.All-in-all though, these NET8 chapters, as well as drawing on industry experince, were the only resources I utilised on the road to completing my NET8 exam, whilst scoring 48/59.In hindsight, these NET8 chapters deserve 4.5 stars, losing that half a star because of the error in the exam questions. Great information for any DBA though, and definatly the only one to consider when making your Oracle book purchase for OCP.

Good book for the most part but lacking in good material covering the V$ performance view and DBA static views which crop up excessively in the test especially in relation to chapters 4 - 7 (memory and I/O) tuning. A little week on the MTS views also which shocked me when I took the test. Should use this book along with Tuning section from standard Oracle8i documentation and V$ and DBA views from Reference section also from standard Oracle8i documentation.

I passed the performance tuning exam with 48 out of 57 and studied for just 46 days. I read through this book first and then found a copy of the Instructor Lead Training (ILT) book. I found that Oracle documentation was much more difficult to read. When taking the bonus exam, manually write the answer on a piece of paper and check each answer while you are going through the test because when you click the grade button, that answer sheet is WRONG. I used this book to tune two databases at work because the material is very well presented. Regarding the exam, there were 20 very, VERY easy questions and 20 questions that were very difficult. W. C. Feurtado, MCSE, MCDBA, and OCP-DBA wannabe (4 down, 1 to go) ...

I found this study guide to be exceptional. Very well written and comprehensive. The examples and figures displayed throughout the book were well done and emphasized the key concepts essential for the exam. It is obvious the authors are knowledgeable and have extensive real-life application in a variety of settings. This provides for a more practical and useful study guide. Also, since I travel extensively, I found that the Book/CD package allowed me to study anywhere.

This book focuses on the requirements for the exam. It is also a good introduction to both Networking and Perf Tuning. Use along with Exam Cram for best results.