Rating: 
Summary: Needs more work... the practice questions are way too easy.
Review: Compared to the excellent coverage of OCA exam objectives by Sybex's Study Guide for 1Z0-007, this titles does not deliver at all. I used this guide to prepare for the exam along with the Oracle Press title and found that the latter covers the exam material in much more detail. Even the level of practice questions in the Sybex study guide are nowhere even near the level of difficulty the real exam poses. These questions should be revised keeping in view the test format (Basic/Mastery Sections). Even the coverage of materials is superficial and not enough to give the candidate the confidence to take the exam. My suggestion would be to use another book along with this study guide (I strongly recommend the Oracle Press title - the CD has some excellent questions).
Rating: 
Summary: Very good for exam preparation
Review: I found this book very helpful for my OCA exams. I passed my first 2 exams for Oracle DBA with 98% and 86% refering to this book (along with some other reference materials). The exercises and the tests in this book gave a very good picture of the real exam and were very similar to it. But I wouldn't advise on relying completely on this book.Some other reference is necessary.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent book for fundamentals I exam
Review: I have passed the Oracle 9i fundamentals I 50/60. This book is
really good with explanations. I will highly recommend it for
dba test. Use self test software simulator questions also
Rating:
Summary: Enough to pass, i might even keep it
Review: I passed the test with 51 right out of 60. This book definitely helped clear up some concepts I had been hazy on in the past, like the relationships between segments and extents. I might even keep it around as a reference just because it's got enough condensed info on a wide range of topics that it might prove useful at some point when I need to create a profile or a partitioned index.If you have the extra dough, spring for the practice tests at selftestsoftware.com. Some of those questions showed up almost word for word on the exam.
Rating:
Summary: Very useful. Passed first time.
Review: I purchased this book and downloaded Oracle 9i from the Oracle web site. I spent less than 40 hours reading the book, doing the practice questions and playing around with Oracle and I passed the exam with a 47/60. It's not the greatest of passing margins but considering I haven't had any prior experience or training with Oracle (I have had one year of experience with MS SQL Server 2000) and it took less than 40 hours of my time to prepare for it, I would say the book did its job well.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Preparation
Review: I read the book and passed the test on my first attempt. I did not find any errors like those found in the Oracle Press 9i exam prep books. All the topics were covered. The CD-ROM exams and flash cards were a big help. Overall, excellent test preparation.
Rating:
Summary: Not good enough
Review: I spent about one month almost every night preparing for the exam by only reading this book. Unfortunatly I failed the exam. There are a lot of topics just not explained clearly by the book, although the subjects are all covered. And if you want to pass the exam with a safe margin, you need to understand completely all the topics. With just this book, it can be difficult. I havn't read other exam prep books. But I think having a second book might be necessary. But overall, this book is probably better than others, and can be used as a base.
Rating:
Summary: Good Reference
Review: I used this book and ILT Oracle's manual for my preparation.
Most of the objectives are covered in the book, I like the way in which information is being presented, the only problem I found is some chapters miss important information such as names of dictionary views, which are clever to exam.
NLS is barely covered and not all views are shown.
The tables chapter enforced too much about types of segments, I spent too much time looking into creating partioned tables which is not part of exam objectives.
The Undo chapter misses information on how to check for PENDING DELETE rollback segments.
Follow Exam Objectives when using this book, so you won't waste time memorizing stuff you don't need.
Good Luck
Rating:
Summary: Good book for OCP candidates
Review: It is a good book to use as preparation tool for Oracle 9i Fundamentals I. I like the style of the book. It is well-organized. With this book it took me a month and half to get prepared for the exam. And I passed my exam 1z0-031 on first attempt. I will definitely recommend this book to other OCP candidates.
For my exam I also used the Oracle Press book Exam Guide as supplement. The oracle press book exam guide has many practice exam questions that I used. DeKalb, IL US
Rating:
Summary: Good book for OCP candidates
Review: It is a good book to use as preparation tool for Oracle 9i Fundamentals I. I like the style of the book. It is well-organized. With this book it took me a month and half to get prepared for the exam. And I passed my exam 1z0-031 on first attempt. I will definitely recommend this book to other OCP candidates.
For my exam I also used the Oracle Press book Exam Guide as supplement. The oracle press book exam guide has many practice exam questions that I used. DeKalb, IL US
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