Oracle Scripts: Powerful Tools for Dbas and Developers [With Contains All of the Scripts Discussed in the Book]

As an Oracle Certified Professional DBA, I found this book to be worth every cent. The scripts are comprehensive, covering almost every area that could possibly need attention. Although the O/S specific scripts will need some modifications to run on O/S's other than Unix, the SQL portions are exactly the same across any imaginable platform. You could find some of the same functionality in many of the enterprise management tools, but these enterprise management tools cost orders of magnitude more than this book AND you have to be a rocket-scientist to configure and use them. Brian and David, please keep up the good work!

I just bought this book and installed the scripts, and the "every5" script has already warned me of an impending disaster and as a result literally saved my job! I can't believe such a wide array of useful scripts is available for such a reasonab le price! O'Reilly is to be commended again!

About three years ago I was an Informix contractor, but Oracle8's arrival killed off the market. The dribble of contracts left were of the "Informix Project Converting to Oracle" variety. Extracting my head from the sand, I leapt across into Fortress Oracle before the drawbridge lifted. As a born-again Oracle DBA, I then encountered SQL*Plus; which was not spirtitually uplifting. The best thing in Informix for me had been the 'isql' tool. While Uncle Larry had poured his energy into sales development, Informix had created lots of lovely tools. Without the crutch of 'isql', all sorts of awkward people now asked me devilish questions, such as "Why am I paying you, when you know nothing?". But after scouring bookshelves for help, "Oracle Scripts" fell into my grasping hands. Like Indiana Jones on the bridge in 'The Last Crusade', its broad scattering of SQL made the way clear. Hundreds of well-written front-end scripts, covering every area of Oracle an old Informix hacker could wish for, easily manipulated into your own favourite toolset. As for back-end background coverage, the book's "every5" script series cuts out blood-pressured calls from suits, giving you advance bad news via email. When the calls come now, I've already sorted the problem (touch wood). Which is a big improvement from living in Panic-Reaction city, Arizona.Andy Duncan, Oracle Certified Professional DBA

This is a great book, full of useful scripts that will make the DBA's life easier in many ways, and occasionally save his/her hide as well! The book is not geared towards the novice, and certainly is not a tutorial on Oracle database administration, but the scripts cover the entire range of DBA tasks. The reader should pay careful attention to the introduction, where the authors lay out the need for some customization and care - some of the other comments posted here are from people who obviously didn't pay attention to this section. There is no way a book of scripts will work "out of the box" for every environment, and they make no pretense about this. This book is a great value for the price, but it won't replace using your brain!

Excellent range of scripts a few of which we have used in production. Well documented, easy to install, well written. Check their web site for a couple of updates, but generally very useful. Some duplication in the book (lot of cross referencing!) but one scrpt would take more than an hour to write - which pays for the book.