Rating: 
Summary: Great Reference
Review: This book is an excellent Oracle reference. It is not a text book, or a book for beginners. It is a book for the experienced Oracle professional who needs to look up a command or two. I use this book all the time in my job. I could not do without it. If I could only have 1 Oracle book this would be the one.
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Summary: Best Oracle book I've seen!
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. It is well organized and the authors should be commended for the patience and time they took to dissect every detail of Oracle. They don't present generic code examples, but those that are very complex and ones that an Oracle developer may see, or write, in a practical setting. After presenting the examples, the authors proceed to analyze every line of code, one by one, and discuss what each segment does. The last section of the book is a glossary of Oracle terms and commands. Most are accompanied by a detailed explanation and some have coding examples. Just this section alone is worth the purchase of this book.
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Summary: oracle 8 the complete reference
Review: chapter 22 and chapter 24 of this book
Rating: 
Summary: Useful book containing many stupid things
Review: First, the Oracle8 Complete Reference is a useful reference book. But try not to pay too much attention to the actual words of the author(s). Some of them are laughable. I'll keep this brief, so here's just one excerpt:"ORACLE8 does not presently support an OO concept called polymorphism. Polymorphism is the ability of the same instruction to be interpreted different ways by different objects. For example, assume that the instruction is 'fire'. The 'fire' instruction, as applied to the 'employee' object, would be interpreted in one manner; the same instruction, as applied to the 'gun' object, would be interpreted in a totally different manner." Apparently the author doesn't know the difference between polymorphism and a pun. He certainly doesn't have any understanding of what polymorphism really means. His defense of ORACLE SQL extensions is even sillier, and his presentation of normalization is oblique and confused (and fortunately, because he apparently doesn't really understand it, he only wastes a couple of pages on the topic), but as I said, I'll keep this brief. What's bad about this is that the author is filling fresh new minds with misinformation. But that's hardly a rarity in technical publishing nowadays. Decent books on DBMS are rare. This isn't a decent book, but it is a decent reference for ORACLE8, and probably better than many other "big thick book" alternatives. Caveat emptor.
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Summary: It's just too big to lift
Review: If you're doing Oracle programming, you probably need a complete reference. The question is: do you need this one? This book would be a lot more usable if if were broken down into a couple of paperback volumes, which you might be inclined to open and peruse from time to time. In this massive hardcover version, you'll only take it off the shelf when you get desperate.
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Summary: Superior reference for developers (not DBA's!) ...a delight
Review: I got into this book in depth when I was studying for test 1 of 4 for Oracle DBA Certification. That test, and this book, cover application level concepts, such as SQL, privleges, data dictionary stuff, PL/SQL, and the like. The explanations and examples are extremely good, very clear and easy to understand. They are well developed, coherent, easy to follow, and use good sample data. There is no way you won't have an in-depth understanding of Oracle from an application developers standpoint if you read this book. It was literally a joy to read after studying some of the sloppy certification guides that are out there. I'm very confident in my Oracle skills, with this book at my side.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: This is very good book for the beginners I found this book very helpful.The language and examples are easily understood and it answers almost all of your questions on Oracle database.The reference material at the end is really useful but I wish there was more coverage on PL/SQL.
Rating: 
Summary: Good book if you are a beginner
Review: This book cover writing code in SQL and PL/SQL. First few chapters give introduction to database design. I was hoping for information on Developer 2000. I needed information on how to create forms, reports, and a user interface. I think I should have read the description a little more carefully.
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Summary: Broad but surprisingly incomplete for its size
Review: I used this book as the textbook in a college course in learning SQL using ORACLE that I was teaching. I surveyed the book in the process of preparing the reading assignments, then taught the topics. To my surprise, too often, I presented material commonly used that the book did not address or did not cover well (such as "FM" formatting code as a simple example). Students found the book inadequate for understanding, and I needed to cover material in lecture because the book did not adequately cover. The tuning chapter does an excellent job of abstracting the tuning process but it does not relate that discussion to explain plan output. For its discussion of SQL/PLUS I had to supplement by giving them a complete copy of the SQL/PLUS command reference from the online documentation to allow them to perform their assignments. The book is adequate, an overview of Oracle. But for its size, it's missing the information necessary to move confidently into practice. Unfortunately, this book may still be the best available.
Rating:
Summary: Wide but not deep
Review: This enormous book attempts to document all the aspects of Oracle SQL (and even other stuff), but the coverage afforded each topic is very thin. As a newbie, I found the book quite useful overall, but there are poorly-described sections with few or no examples that will leave you scratching your head.
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