Professional Oracle 8i Enterprise Application Development

Some other reviewers have stated that this book is uneven in quality. I agree with that assessment but argue that is unavoidable. I cannot think of any one person who possesses the knowledge to write intelligently about all of this material in the depth this book has.In a few areas it is dated (obviously 9i is out NOW, but wasn't when this book was published), but it is still overall extremely valuable. I have had my copy for about a year now and have read it almost completely once (you can't read a 1200 page tech book cover to cover) and have referred to it in a pinch more times than I can remember.In short, a must have for any serious Oracle developer.

To produce this book, Wrox took twenty expert Oracle developers and had each of them write about their area of expertise. The result is that whether you are a manager, a developer, or a DBA, if you are working with Oracle 8i this book should be on your desk. This book covers virtually every topic that you need to understand about the Oracle 8i development platform. It does not cover each topic completely but it provides a thorough and in most cases sufficient introduction on each topic. For a particular topic of interest you may need an additional book but to get all the information found in this book you would need ten volumes at least. The book opens with an introduction to Oracle 8i and some of its components including Net8 (Oracle's network solution) and Designer 6i (Oracle's development environment). The next section covers PL/SQL and PSP (this is similar to JSP). This is followed by an extensive section covering Java. This section covers JDBC, SQLJ, EJB, and interMedia (Oracle's powerful search tool). The last section covers XML and includes information on DOM and SAX parsers, SOAP, XSL, XSQL, and more. Extensive case studies are scattered throughout the book. Examples show how to use Oracle tools such as BC4J to develop enterprise applications. The book even includes primers on Java and XML. As a tour of all the features of Oracle 8i, this book is without competition.

This is an excellent book as it covers a lot of ground in one volume. If you work in a organisation that has Oracle as the engine for their web based applications, you must have this book.Many books cover Java or XML or SQL and the like; but this is one of the few books that delves into HOW to put all of these together to make it work! As this book is released in newer additions, I shall be buying it as soon as it is available.

One of the best books around for database application developers working with Java/XML on the Oracle platform and who don't nowadays! The book is up-to-date with Oracle 8.1.7 and covers new aspect such as JDBC2.0 and the Java to native compiler (NCOMP). I give it five stars because it covers all important Java/XML aspects in great detail and because it already proved its worth by providing me with solutions for really tricky problems. The only neagtive thing I can think of is its size. But I guess the American authors probably got paid per line.

This book is one of the more comprehensive I have read about Oracle programming. It has very good examples and you will find tips and information you won't find in any other books/web sites/forums etc. This book has been written by genuine Oracle developers and you will get a depth of real-world knowledge and application. I recommend highly it for the serious Oracle, Java and XML developer.