Oracle Essentials: Oracle8 and Oracle8i

If you're looking for an overview of Oracle and how it works - either because your DBA experienced on other products or know some areas of Oracle and want the big picture - this is an excellent starting point. The blurb describes it as 'an invaluable, all-in-one introduction' it lives up to that description The text style is lucid and brief - with useful diagrams and references to relevant views/tables throughout. The bibliography also provides lots of useful areas to follow up.This book doesn't pretend to be the last word on Oracle - it aims to be a starting point - if that's what you're after then you could do much worse than this.If you're already familiar with Oracle and looking for detailed answers to specific problems with your database you probably wont find them here - the clue was in the title!

2 years as a DBA... just switching from Microsoft to Oracle... know about databases but needed something to teach me how to see the world through Oracle eyes. Couldn't have picked a better book. Won't make you an expert in any area, but you'll be conversant in all of them-- gives you the framework you so desperately need in order to be able to hold all the other pieces you learn into place. And, unlike VIRTUALLY EVERY OTHER BOOK on this subject, skinny enough to carry in my backpack and read on the train to & from work every morning. A+.

This book has excellent "general concepts". As a DBA and consultant, something that separates you from everyone else is the ability to understand the 'what' and 'how' of Oracle. This book also has appendices that give you 6-7 books per chapter for the gritty details and the 'how-to'(ex: Oracle Parallel server, Oracle Application Server). I recommend this book to junior-midrange people and anyone going for a job interview!

Excellent book and exactly what I was looking for.I had experience with both Oracle 6 and 7. Given that Oracle has become very massive I was looking for a book that would give me an overview of the Oracle 8 architecture and capabilities. This book does this very well. It actually does not limit itself to Oracle 8 and is surprisingly detailed as well. People that are purely looking for practical information might be disappointed but otherwise I would recommend this book to everyone.

This book provides an excellent explanation of the Oracle architecture (not only of Oracle 8 but also of previous releases). At the end I was able to understand what is the SGA, a redo log, a data buffer, RAID, a listener, a datawarehouse application, a star schema, a Java-language trigger, an Oracle Application Server ... and much more, all with the necessary details, not too few and not too much; indeed, I think that density is the main quality of this book. Everything is carefully and clearly explained, making this a valuable resource for everyone who wants to learn Oracle from scratch or simply to assemble the pieces learnt in years of practical experience (as it was my case). In short, for example, for the latest tricks on query optimization, go elsewhere, but if you want to grab a general detailed and clear idea of how Oracle processes your query (which is 70% of what is needed in everyday work), this book is for you. I was greatly satisfied of my purchase, and I think the 'return on investment' is vastly superior than the cheap price of this book!