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Rating: 
Summary: The Authors accomplish exactly what they set out to do.
Review: Dr. Dorsey and Mr. Koletzke set out to show how designer 2000 could be used in the context of an overall system development effort. As an experienced designer 2000 user, this is what makes the book the most useful to me. Not only do the authors show how to use the various parts of designer effectively, they provide a list of the missing parts - things that should be done in a good system development effort but which are not included in Designer 2000. I would recommend this book to: 1) persons with some designer experience who are attempting to use designer 2000 for serious development efforts; 2) teachers in an advanced database design class; and 3) anybody interesting in understanding the role of software design tools in modern software practice. Novices will need to spend some time working with the tool, performing the designer tutorial that comes with designer, and perhaps reading some of the other literature on database design such as Date's "An Introduction to Database Systems". Excellent book. I cannot wait for the authors to produce another edition to cover Designer 2000 version 2.1.
Rating: 
Summary: Still contains factual errors
Review: I was hoping that this edition would correct the problems of the earlier edition, but I was disappointed to find that many of the errors remained. In addition, the text appears to be poorly edited, and the content is sometimes confusing and obtuse. Overall, I was disappointed in the content and the editing.
Rating:
Summary: Still contains factual errors
Review: I've read every book about Designer that I can get may hands on and this is The Best of Breed in my opinion. The book is really 2 books in 1; an excellent description of Designer and an equally excellent explanation of a methodology in which the tools can be used. This combination of conceptual clarity and practical application is unique and provides a "forest AND the trees" approach that makes reading and re-reading the book and outstanding learning experience. I can't wait for the next iteration!
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding and Coherent Explanation of Methodology and Tool
Review: I've read every book about Designer that I can get may hands on and this is The Best of Breed in my opinion. The book is really 2 books in 1; an excellent description of Designer and an equally excellent explanation of a methodology in which the tools can be used. This combination of conceptual clarity and practical application is unique and provides a "forest AND the trees" approach that makes reading and re-reading the book and outstanding learning experience. I can't wait for the next iteration!
Rating: 
Summary: Not As Helpful As I Had Hoped
Review: This is a reference book that covers the myriad collection of tools that make up the Oracle Designer/2000 environment. A book on this subject is likely to be most useful when you are trying to learn how to use these tools, but unfortunatly the Oracle Designer/2000 handbook comes up short in several important respects. The most obvious of these is the lack of a unifying example to tie the tool usage and methodology together. What is presented instead is a high-level methodology description and examples of tool usage on a tool-by-tool basis. The presentation is not always smooth as one goes from section to section - it's not easy to see how the work described with one tool has any connection to the different work described with the next. There are tips and notes throughout the book and many of the tips are actually more helpful than the text they support. While systems designers are used to the fact that structured methodologies require a lot of up-front work before the actual system is built, it still comes as a bit of a shock to find that you have to read over fifty percent of the book (almost 350 pages!) before you get to a description of the actual Design activities. Discussions of subjects such as interviewing techniques in requirements gathering make the first part of the book considerably longer than it needs to be. It makes little sense to attempt to use the book without having access to the Designer/2000 system. I found myself constantly cross-checking between the book and the on-line Help files in order to find out what some of the tool options and screen fields meant. I honestly grew to hate the book's inadequate index. Not only are there too few entries, in several cases the page numbers are incorrect as well. In summary, I will continue to keep the Oracle Designer/2000 Handbook near my desk, but I'm going to purchase some other books in the hope that they will provide more support as I continue to learn the system.
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