Rating: 
Summary: Useful book
Review: The title suggests this book is an Introduction to web applications. As an Oracle contractor who knew little about the web, I found it very helpful in that it explained clearly and concisely some of the approaches that the Oracle Corp is taking to web development. For me, it was useful to have a summary of HTML and XML. Well worth a read.
Rating:
Summary: Great intro for Oracle Developers, but dated
Review: This book came out in 1999, and it's now late 2001 as I write this.This publication is a very well written introduction to the spectrum of tools and approaches for using Oracle databases to generate dynamically created web pages - based on 1999 technology. While Oracle has advanced since then, most of this book - especially the PL/SQL web toolkit sections - is still useful. If you're an Oracle developer who's familiar with SQL and PL/SQL, then this book will get you up to speed very quickly (it's only 220 pages - thin by "computer book" standards) on the detail of how the PL/SQL web toolkit is used to combine database data with HTML. If you're an Oracle developer, but you don't know anything about web architecture or HTML, then you'll get a brief yet effective introduction in here of what you need to know. If you don't know PL/SQL, get Steve Feuerstein's book first called Oracle PL/SQL Programming. Use that to learn PL/SQL. Then, once you're familiar with it, you'll get much, much more out of what's presented in this book. The section about the PL/SQL web toolkit is very useful, even today. The overview of WebDB is dated. Oracle's new name for this tool is "Oracle Portal", and while the underlying architecture is the same, and the features taught here still largely apply, there are new features and a completely different interface on the new tool. The chapter about Oracle Application Server (OAS) is still interesting to read for an overall idea of how web architecture is implemented in Oracle's web server family. But the app server has been updated several times since this book, and has very different screen displays. The basic features are still the same, and the brief review provides helpful insight into where Oracle has been, which isn't too far, fundamentally, from where it is now. Finally, the XML chapter is not bad for quickly getting a great general introduction of XML and it's capabilities, but be aware that Oracle has GREATLY extended it's XML support since the publication of this book. Nevertheless, I still find this chapter extremely interesting in that it shows the intricacies of what it really takes to generate an XML document, while the newer Oracle XML utilities do much of this work automatically. While the new utilities are good to use, this chapter will give you a bit more insight into the utility of XML and a database, along with a fuller understanding of what is happening, so that you can be more flexible in your use of XML. There's nothing of substance in this book that addresses Java or Oracle Forms for web use. So - in summary - it's a little dated for 2001, but still very useful. It's brief and to the point. Very helpful for an Oracle developer who needs to come up to speed quickly on web technologies.
Rating: 
Summary: Great book & resource
Review: This is a fabulous book, clear and well-written. It's simple enough for those without much experience, but also provides enough detail for those who don't need coddling... Definitely, worth the $.
Rating: 
Summary: Too simple. Read the free oracle online manuals instead.
Review: You could get more from the Oracle OAS and WEBDB manual. This book is thin(232 pages), however, it spends 50 pages introducing what is HTML and PL/SQL. The WebDB introduction is too simple and doesn't have any examples. System admin staff in the OAS section is OK for the very begineers, but isn't as resourceful as the OAS online manual, besides the examples are done against OAS 3.0 not the current version 4.0.8. The PL/SQL toolkit section is OK. but I would prefer to read the OAS web developer online manual. Well not worth the money, I am going to return this book.
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