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Summary: This book saved my job!
Review: 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
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Summary: Bread on the Table
Review: 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
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Summary: Not for NT
Review: Almost all of the SQL scripts shown require UNIX scripts for execution. Unless you know how to convert the UNIX scripts to NT this book is not very useful.
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Summary: Why was this book written?
Review: 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!
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Summary: Fantastic reference!
Review: 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!
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Summary: Usual O'Reilly quality (do I get my ten quid?)
Review: 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.
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Summary: This book saved my job!
Review: 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!
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Summary: Excellent support for scripts
Review: I want to ammend the rating below because I have been so impressed with O'Reilly support. While one script, crviews.sql, has a problem in the first printing, O'Reilly quickly mailed me a fixed copy, and made changes for the 2nd edition. The new script runs flawlessly, and I am very impressed with the support for the scripts.
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Summary: Thin, thin, thin
Review: If you have some time on your hands and want to line-by-line debug/modify/enhance a set of scripts that were originally written for Oracle 7, then buy this book. Otherwise, take a pass. Three years after it was published, there still is a need for Oracle Scripts: not because of any inherent excellence, but because the tools Oracle itself provides are somewhat obtuse. Be aware that the scripts reside only on the accompanying CD and are buggy. Get updates from the O'Reilly website. As some other reviewers have noted, the scripts are targeted for UNIX DBAs. Conversion to NT platform is not difficult, but you're buying the book to avoid unnecessary coding, aren't you? Lastly, and most annoyingly, there is very little supporting documentation in the text.
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Summary: Poorly documented and not worth the money
Review: Luckily my company picked up the tab, else I would have returned it. This book seems to be cooked up by some DBA's out to make a buck. Many of the scripts wouldn't work just from viewing them. The documentation was not detailed enough to keep a novice from potentially making a critical mistake if one were to run these without first understanding the script. Scripts could have been more user friendly by using variables instead of having to hard-code the intened object. Poor work...
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