Rating: 
Summary: Great Reference
Review: After reading the reviews posted here, I decided to buy the book and decide for myself. What I found was pretty much what the title implies: a good solid reference book for Oracle the Oracle DBA. Sure, it contains content (I noticed an acknowlegement and copyright notice to that effect) from the Oracle documentation - but how could a good Oracle reference not? There are 16 chapters, and two or three of them seem to contain information essentially from the documentation, but edited in a way I find helpful. More importantly, the authors have distilled information from a variety of Oracle manuals and put the info in one place - a great help to me. I am an experienced DBA, and I suspect I will be using this book a lot!
Rating: 
Summary: What was O'Reilly thinking?
Review: After reading this book, I cannot figure out who the target audience is supposed to be. It's not for beginners - there's no beef here for them. It's not for advanced users - most of the book is just copies of Oracle reference manual, word for word. Maybe there's some intermediate level who would find it useful, but I'm intermediate and I found this book to be useless.Congratulations to O'Reilly on further lowering the standards in the Oracle book market. If you're a beginner, look elsewhere. If you already know some DBA, look elsewhere. If you want to get the book's only worthwhile content for free, just read your Oracle doc set.
Rating:
Summary: A Disapointing book from O'Reilly
Review: Beside the fact the book is made from Oracle documentation (thanks God for cut-and-paste), which is by the way available on their web site for free, this book may be suitable for very junior DBAs. There is almost nothing inside which can be used in real DBA's life - explanations are too shallow and few available scripts can't help much. So, if you are experienced DBA or doing some serious work with Oracle, this book can't help. I have six O'Reily's book (Oracle) and this one is far bellow quality of the others.
Rating:
Summary: How can 130pages for 7 chapters clearly explain DBA's work?!
Review: Can't understand why someone gives it 5*, ... worse than handbook and document came together with cd. I have this book at my hand, it used only 130 pages (p1-p130) to cover all OCP test contents except SQL. unbelieveable....
Rating:
Summary: Quality Book!
Review: I am a Sybase DBA and I found this book very useful in terms of knowledge and information. This book is perfect! Don't listen to the other reviewers saying not so good things about this book. They should have read the back cover before they bought it!
Rating:
Summary: Quality Book!
Review: I am a Sybase DBA and I found this book very useful in terms of knowledge and information. This book is perfect! Don't listen to the other reviewers saying not so good things about this book. They should have read the back cover before they buying it!
Rating:
Summary: I can not agree that a good admin book could be like this
Review: I can not believe that a good database administration book could give Oracle Enterprise Manager only two pages (page 173 to 174) plus three line on page 172.
Rating:
Summary: The prvious reviewer missed the point of this book!
Review: I have been a consultant and practicing Oracle DBA for over 10 years, and this book is one of the most valuable I have ever purchased. Does it contain material from the Oracle documentation? Of course! How could such a book be written otherwise? I suggest that this reader read the Introduction, where the authors state their goals for the book, and he/she will find that they are met quite well. I have found that even material the at first glance SEEMS to be taken directly from the Oracle manuals is in fact distilled, edited, augmented, and generally makes a lot more sense! The book is intended to be a single-volume reference for the Oracle DBA, and it does a FANTASTIC job at that. No, it doesn't cover 8i, but so what? 8i is not being used at any serious Oracle site yet, and that version is too new and unstable to expect to have a book about it. Besides, the book clearly states that it covers up through version 8.0. I would recommend this book wholeheartedly to any Oracle DBA, and I give it 6 Stars!
Rating:
Summary: Is this guy in Oracle kindergarten?
Review: I have been an Oracle DBA for over 12 years and I found NOTHING useful in this book. What a waste of trees.
Rating: 
Summary: Sometimes useful companion
Review: I really didn't like this book in the beginning. Why? Most of the time I'm using an on-line documentation for quick reference and original Oracle documentation set for studying material larger than a few pages. In the old days (do you remember Oracle Book ? ;-) this kind of reference guide would be a rescue for any DBA. Now days?Perhaps... The organization of the book is quite good, index is excellent and some chapters are more than just reference on the subject. When I'm not working on the site where I can easily reach on-line documentation or paper manuals then this book goes with me. One drawback at the time of writing this review is that this edition doesn't cover Oracle8i so you should at least wait for the second edition.
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