Rating: 
Summary: Handy reference tool
Review: Although some of the items in this book are outdated (due to the costant changing of this software), is still a handy reference guide. Am currrently taking an Oracle 8 class in college, and have found it useful on severtal occasions.
Rating: 
Summary: Remember it is supposed to be for Beginners
Review: As an Oracle novice I found this book was one of the best/only foundation books that was actually readable. The organization was a little weird and I actually found myself bouncing through it based on what I was interested about first. It did set a good baseline for a class. It isn't going to give you what you need to be an Oracle DBA/Developer and will likely frustrate an experienced Oracle techie. But if your experienced why do you need to read a beginner's book. The authors obviously like Oracle.
Rating: 
Summary: Total waste of your money
Review: Believe me, it's a total waste of your money.Poor organization of the contents and too many mistakes for beginners to learn as truth. Example: switched titles for figures of structured data and unstructured data. Wrong result of using functions such as displaying that there are 13 months between 12-March-99 and April-98. Don't be supprised to see that the result of a query shown in book is different from what you get from running Oracle SQL*Plus.
Rating:
Summary: A Complete Embarrassment - DON'T BUY.
Review: Clearly the authors/editors did not take the time to peruse the book for TYPOS, ERRORS IN THE SAMPLES, INCORRECT PASSAGES, etc. As a beginner I spent hours reading and re-reading the samples given in the book and asking my co-workers to clarify only to find out that I had been mis-lead by errors in the text. And the book is replete with errors! You would think the authors would be intelligent enough to stay away from using GLOBAL SEARCH & REPLACES when editing the book, let alone run a simple SPELL CHECK to catch a myriad of typos. The book also contains more advertising for Oracle Products than it has useful information. A definite disgrace for both ORACLE and the authors.
Rating:
Summary: A pathetic little book....
Review: Don't waste your money. This book was selected as a text for a class. The examples provided in the book are not complete. The chapters are poorly organized and do not explain a function or feature completely. This is not a Beginner's Guide more like Cliff Notes.
Rating:
Summary: It should have been called the Morons guide to Oracle ...
Review: for those that don't know enough (or want to learn enough) to qualify as idiots. The book has many mistakes, too much fawning over Oracle, and not enough useful information. A better choice would be the Complete Guide to Oracle. I made the mistake of buying it at a Bricks and Mortar store after a quick look at it. I returned it a couple days later when I realized that however little I knew about Oracle that this book taught even less. This shows why reader comments at Amazon are so useful, had I read them I never would have wasted my time with the book.
Rating:
Summary: More like Oracle for Dummies
Review: I bought this book because I needed to learn Oracle quickly. I had to read through pages and pages of junk (jokes, tidbits, etc) and still there wasn't much content. Most of the examples are on NT which leaves out many of the hands-on features of Oracle. Unless you need extra shelf-ware, DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK!
Rating:
Summary: More like Oracle for Dummies
Review: I bought this book because I needed to learn Oracle quickly. I had to read through pages and pages of junk (jokes, tidbits, etc) and still there wasn't much content. Most of the examples are on NT which leaves out many of the hands-on features of Oracle. Unless you need extra shelf-ware, DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK!
Rating:
Summary: For people who know absolutely nothing about Oracle
Review: I came in knowing nothing about Oracle except that it was a database program. I didn't even know exactly what to do with it. If you are in a similar situation, then this book is good, because it'll get you on your feet, and introduce you to what it's all about. It will give you a VERY LIGHT introduction to most features of Oracle. However, once you need to do anything useful, this book SUCKS. I installed Oracle on my system, and I needed to somehow log in. How do I do it? What are the default passwords and accounts? This book did not tell me anything on this subject. In the examples for the installation procedure, they say "Let's assume you have an account Polly with the password 'gone'" HOW DID THEY CREATE THIS USER WITHOUT FIRST LOGGING IN???? HOW DID THEY LOG IN??? They never explain this, and these types of oversights are throughout the entire book. Basically, if you know nothing about Oracle, this book explains things in a way that you can understand what the purpose of all the functions and programs are. If you want a 2-minute introduction to everything, get this book, and then once you roll up your sleeves, go buy another one. I don't regret buying this book, but I quickly realized I needed another one to help me do anything useful.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't get this book unless you have a lot of money to waste
Review: I don't recommend this book to anyone. buy this book only if you have too muhc money and time on your hand. there are plenty of good books out there about Oracle and this is not one of them. This book does not explain things well and it is extremely dry and boring.
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