Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: DBAs must not miss this book. I am confident that any DBA will like this book. It is one stop knowledge source for DBA.
Rating:
Summary: The best book on Oracle Database ever.
Review: I have the book for almost two years and use it
quite often. Devraj explains not only database, but the whole system. It is crucial for any good DBA to understands systems and software architecture. This book explains it all. Great explanation about mirroring. The best book on Oracle Database ever.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent, but not for the faint-at-heart
Review: I haven't been a DBA for very long and although this book has everything in it explained very well, I'm not sure that I would recommend it for beginners. Beginners need more detail, which understandbly you can't fit into any one book. But this is definetely excellent as reference material to start you off in the right direction. I wouldn't dare do standby without it!
Rating:
Summary: Exactly what e-commerce/Internet DBA's need
Review: I just finished reading this book, cover to cover. Excellant. This is one of the best books on Oracle I have found yet and I have many. I am an Oracle certified master internet DBA with over 5 years experiance and currently work for a multi-service enterprise as a DBA for databases ranging from 7.0.16 to 8.1.6 for laboratory operations and the domain name registrar Dotster.com. I have just installed an OPS cluster for the ecommerce site. I had to go through a number of books and papers for much less information than contained here. The book provides insight into many areas that I will use for years to come. I strongly recommend the purchase of this book and that you should at least skim the parts you think you already know.
Rating:
Summary: "Oracle 24x7" is not just for DBAs
Review: I supervise eighteen Oracle Data Base Administrators and had to come up-to-speed on the different types of backup and recovery strategies that could be used with Oracle data bases. This book, which was recommended to me by one of the senior DBAs, did a good job with "Tips for Semi-Technical Managers and Supervisors" (my own background is in application development). It was very easy for me to find information on which recovery options make sense for the various customer up-time requirements (and how expensive each one is), how to manage space and growth (and what to do if your customer really, really underestimates the amount of table space needed), which standby options make sense, when to use advanced replication, etc.In fact, this book paid for itself when one of our (internal)customers decided to go with asynchronous replication for the Oracle data bases that support 24x7 access to our nuclear generation plant, and we had to very quickly come up-to-speed on how to implement AR. The final chapter in "Oracle 24x7 Tips & Techniques" talks about the high availibility features that are available with Oracle8i, for those of you who are looking at 8i or have already converted over to it.
Rating:
Summary: Every single chapter is highly recommended
Review: In today's world of "write a book in a month for the money", so many self-proclaimed "technical authors" seem to be making hay reengineering the user manuals. This book comes across as a refreshing change. The author claims to have spent a year writing it. And this time appears to have been really well spent. The book is meticulously researched and extremely well written. The topics covered are built well on top on one another. Each chapter is crucial in learning to maintain complete database uptime. At the same time, any individual chapter can be separately read. The first chapter that caught my fancy was chapter 13 (Interpreting the alert log and trace files). It dissects the alert log and systematically presents information that I have never seen before. examples: newer tracing options, tracing of PL/SQL code by dumping PL/SQL buffers, tracing ongoing sessions, detailed analysis of internal errors, etc. etc. Another real winner is chapter 14 on corruption. It provides end to end coverage on corruption. Every issue that comes to mind (and more) is presented there. The author has just not taken an Oracle-centric approach. He has gone behind the Oracle scenes and talks in detail about hardware, operating systems, and even the mysterious network. Information on triple mirroring and third-party replication such as EMC geo mirroring is unprecedented. My sincere advice: get your hands on this book.
Rating:
Summary: Best Oracle Internals book on the market!
Review: This book is a must have for all Oracle DBAs and alike. You can go and spend money on some books that just "touch the surface", or you can buy this very comprehensive guide from the true Oracle master, and learn Oracle from the inside and out. This book is a piece of art, and it covers hardware configuration (yes, RAID is included), operating systems, networks, installation, database setup and configuration, reorganization, migration, applications and data management, comprehensive chapters on tuning and backup and recovery, you name it. Also, Venkat includes very detailed chapters on interpreting the alert-log and trace-files, and identifying and repairing database corruption. This information is usually only available to Oracle Tech support, and it alone is worth the price of this book. This book is packed with hundreds of tips and techniques and real-world examples for accomplishing around-the-clock database availability. Beginning and experienced DBAs alike will get tons of invaluable information that will enhance their professional growth significantly. The bottom line is if you want to take your skills to the next level, buy this book!
Rating: 
Summary: One good book, save for a few version specific inaccuracies
Review: This book provides a wealth of information to both the information manager and database administrator. First inspection leads one to feel there is too much technical details for the information manager and not enough for the database administrator. However, any text of this small size (just over 1000 pages) could not possibly provide all the information needed by both categories of readers. There do appear to be a few statements in the text which conflict with Oracle's support site as well as my personal experiences. For example, on page 119 the author states that Oracle Multi-Threaded Server is not available on the Windows NT platform. While this is true for the older Oracle 7.x Server, it is not true for the Oracle 8i line of database servers which were the standard at the time the book went to press (as the book was copyrighted in year 2000 and I have been usign 8i since 1998.) On the whole I have found this book to be a worthwhile addition to my technical library and recommend it to fellow Amazonians.
Rating:
Summary: A comprehensive guide for todays mission critical apps.
Review: This is an essential reference for all Oracle professionals who desire to achive 99.999% database uptime. The book provides real world solutions to problems encountered by DBAs while trying to make their Database/s work like a charm "all the time". Mind you H/A does not "just happen". For one Oracle does not sell the so called H/A option(check v$option if unsure). In depth coverage of RAID, Triple mirroring for Backups and proven techniques for online reorgs amongst others. Invaluable info. towards avoiding planned and unplanned outages. An excellent complement to the Oracle Documentation. Although called "Tips and Techniques" I think one should read it from cover to cover.
Rating:
Summary: paper dropped after 3 month
Review: This is an excellent book and I learned a lot. The only problem of this book is the papers continue drop down after I read it for three month. I have to say the writer and knowledge are excellent, but manufacture bound quality of this book is low.
| 
