Oracle8 for Dummies

Rating:
Summary: A Good Start
Review: I wanted to set the record straight on this book. It is intended for beginners. I have much MSSQL experience but had not used Oracle. It was daunting trying to get oracle started at first. Most books didn't answer or even address the obvious questions someone needs to ask to log on correctly and get around the tools. This book was perfect for that.

Those who write do not waste your money have missed the point of this book. I was fumbling around for a couple of days. Two days after getting this book and breezing through it, I had Oracle working, could create new tables, run queries and even had an idea how to schedule jobs. NOW I am ready to tackle JDBC and XML, the things I really wanted to get to.

The author does make some light-hearted comments. Some of it was for beginners with no SQL so I breezed through those sections. Even those sections however have points worth picking up. I think she had fun writing the book and it doesn't bother me to have some clear talk and some upbeat, even corny, comments. If you know Oracle, of-course, do not buy this book. If you have never used Oracle and want to start, this is a great first book on it, even for someone with extensive database experience. Read this, then go buy the tomes.

Rating:
Summary: A Good Start
Review: I wanted to set the record straight on this book. It is intended for beginners. I have much MSSQL experience but had not used Oracle. It was daunting trying to get oracle started at first. Most books didn't answer or even address the obvious questions someone needs to ask to log on correctly and get around the tools. This book was perfect for that.

Those who write do not waste your money have missed the point of this book. I was fumbling around for a couple of days. Two days after getting this book and breezing through it, I had Oracle working, could create new tables, run queries and even had an idea how to schedule jobs. NOW I am ready to tackle JDBC and XML, the things I really wanted to get to.

The author does make some light-hearted comments. Some of it was for beginners with no SQL so I breezed through those sections. Even those sections however have points worth picking up. I think she had fun writing the book and it doesn't bother me to have some clear talk and some upbeat, even corny, comments. If you know Oracle, of-course, do not buy this book. If you have never used Oracle and want to start, this is a great first book on it, even for someone with extensive database experience. Read this, then go buy the tomes.

Rating:
Summary: Another example of a rush to meet a deadline
Review: I've read several different books on a host of computing languages. I'm not a "God" in any of them, but I CAN read code. I thought that this, my first foray in to "the Dummies" series, might offer a nice leg-up to understand Oracle, Unfortunately this book appears to fall into that morass of books where examples are given without someone checking that the example code actually works. Missing end line ";" characters and vague examples did not expand my understanding of the power of ORACLE 8. The attempts at a folksy writing style merely made me have to search through poor puns, jokes and examples to determine if there was important content, or just yet another reference to the author's home state of Maui or her favourite TV show Star Trek; TNG. The exceptionally poor part was the complete truncation of the last chapter: examples using both the Enterprise Manage and SQL code were shown in parallel. The SQL code was where I was making most progress in understanding ORACLE, but the chapter ends with "... next is an example using SQL." Then the glossary started. Ugh. I'm sorry I bought this book for $40. Bottom line: Lots of repetitive examples for how to boot up, step-by-step each example. Poor code demonstration. Sections left incomplete.

Rating:
Summary: Good for beginners
Review: Oracle 8 for Dummies, covered the fundamentals very well. I feel it is a good place to start for novices, but not intermediate and advanced database administrators. Oh yeah, and what about platforms other than NT?

Rating:
Summary: Dont Waste Your MONEY
Review: Plain and simple just like what the Summary says, Dont waste your money, I bought it at 10am and returned it at 4pm the same day at local bookstore. IF this is what it takes to be and author for the Dummies series, I think that My Labrador retreiver is over qualified for the job.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent for Beginners. Poor for Advanced Admin/Developers
Review: The book is actually very good at the basics, and getting a user up and running very quickly with Oracle8. Note, however, the entire book applies to only Oracle8 running on NT4.0, and not any other platform.

The author could have aided the user further by going into more depth in many areas instead of making cute comments throughout the book. I read books for information, not to be entertained.

The CD was poor. It did not even load, and there is no way to contact the author, or a web-site to get bug fixes, or updates. The majority of the books example's rely on the CD and it sample database. And of all the people that buy and actually need this book (aka Dummies), the author needs to provide on-line help for them, or conduct better editing and quality testing before publishing this book.

In summary: if you are completely new to Oracle, but this book. If you have been using Oracle for more than two months, you are no longer a "Dummy", and you will only be satisfied with books of a higher caliber.

Rating:
Summary: do not spend a penny on this book
Review: This is quite possibly the first book that I have ever considered returning because I felt ripped off for having bought it. Although never stated explicitly, it is quite obvious that the author assumes the reader is using a microsoft operating system. Had it stated as much anywhere, I would not have purchased it.

In general, the book is woefully lacking in content. I am not sure why the author/publishers believe that a book on oracle needs to waste so much space trying to be cute.

Rating:
Summary: This book is more an "Oracle for Dummies" than anything else
Review: With the given title of such a book, it is easy to assume that those who have knowledge of previous versions of Oracle would find this book an aid to quickly and easily using the new features. However it is merely full of "padding" on such irrelevant matters as Tables and Relationships. Most disappointing.