Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: As an Oracle developer, I don't get much use out of this book. I rarely find an answer quickly.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Reference
Review: As an Oracle developer, I have been frustrated reading all the Oracle documentations. It's hard to locate what you want to know in those big and thick documentations. I was thrilled to find this book -- it really is a great reference and it can basiclly replace my collection of some other Oracle books. This book is very well-organized into different topics including architecture, data dictionary, SQL, PL/SQL, JAVA and much more. Some topics like PL/SQL and Java, (imagine they are in one book!) look more like a dictionary. You can easily look up for the systax/commands. It gives you a few lines coding as example followed by a brief explaination --All in a concise manor. ( I believe the author has spent considerable time and effort not only in writing the book to make it as complete as possible but also in oragzating each topic in a logical and easy to follow way. ).Bottom line, this is a very comprehensive resource covering lots of topics, pretty much whatever you need is all in there, in one book!! I have been benefit a lot from having this book at my desktop for quick and easy reference.
Rating:
Summary: No more hunting around through voluminous docs
Review: Finally, a single place to go for questions like: "What goes in that tnsnames.ora file?", "What does the init.ora parameter BUFFER_POOL_RECYCLE do?", and "What's the format for creating a PL/SQL function?". An excellent quick reference (If you can call a book with 912 pages "quick".)
Rating:
Summary: For experienced developers
Review: I agree with another reviewer who said if you know Oracle this could be the book for you. I'm tired of digging through huge books to answer a simple syntax question. This book enables me to get concise answers quickly. But, if you're an Oracle neophyte this is NOT the book for you.
Rating:
Summary: This reference misses tons of basics
Review: If you know Oracle and SQL well, this might be the book for you.
I have a MS in CS and this book (2003 edition) sucks. For instance, I'm trying to view a big number as an integer in SqlPlus. There's a paragraph that says to see the appendix for the numeric formats, but it gives NO examples of how to use them. It turns out examples elsewhere in this section can apply to numbers, but that takes searching, where a simple 3 lines of text could have summarized the 2 ways to set formats. The book is full of omissions and obscurities like this. To set a limit on the number of rows returned, you say "WHERE rownum < X". This seems to be completely missing from the book. The index is large, but simple things, like "WHERE" are missing from it. "USER_TABLES" is missing from the index. I could use a section that tells about other tables like this. So this is a good book only if you already know Oracle and have another good reference by your side, or have access to an experienced Oracle person. I've used LOTS of O'Reilly Nutshell books and love them, except for this one. If you know of a good Oracle reference book, please let me know.
Rating:
Summary: At last! A single Oracle reference work (that's readable)
Review: In a word - indispensible! As usual, O'Reilly come through with the goods again, this time on a topic that most people would believe impossible to condense usefully into a single volume. What's more, it is actually possible to simply read many of the lucid descriptive sections - for example the section describing the locking scheme is a model that all database documentation writers should take note of. Of course, this book isn't for everyone; it presumes a decent grounding in the essentials of RDBMSs - but if you haven't got that, there are any number of books out there to get you started - and THEN you'll want this book.
Rating:
Summary: Everything All In One Place
Review: This book is a terrific reference. I love having one place to look for all of those "simple" questions that come up -- the syntax for a particular function, how to format a column heading in SQL*Plus, what does a particular function from a package do. It comes in very handy when reading someone else's code. This book does not bog you down with lengthy explanations. It is not intended to replace training. It just pulls everything together in one place. If you're going to buy one Oracle book, this is it.
Rating:
Summary: Everything All In One Place
Review: This book is a terrific reference. I love having one place to look for all of those "simple" questions that come up -- the syntax for a particular function, how to format a column heading in SQL*Plus, what does a particular function from a package do. It comes in very handy when reading someone else's code. This book does not bog you down with lengthy explanations. It is not intended to replace training. It just pulls everything together in one place. If you're going to buy one Oracle book, this is it.
Rating:
Summary: Inconvenient and Uneducational
Review: This book was very disappointing. It contains very few examples of anything. While it is useful (though cumbersome) to determine the syntax of Oracle commands, it provides no examples of how to practically use the commands. It gives me no help in determining what command, function, or package to use, no help in how to use it, only the syntax or declaration of it. I find it far more useful to use one of my other reference books or go to the web; at least there I typically find advice and examples on how to use the commands. The book is of very limited use!.
Rating:
Summary: Inconvenient and Uneducational
Review: This book was very disappointing. It contains very few examples of anything. While it is useful (though cumbersome) to determine the syntax of Oracle commands, it provides no examples of how to practically use the commands. It gives me no help in determining what command, function, or package to use, no help in how to use it, only the syntax or declaration of it. I find it far more useful to use one of my other reference books or go to the web; at least there I typically find advice and examples on how to use the commands. The book is of very limited use!.
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