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Rating: 
Summary: Not the book to start your studying with
Review: If you are just starting to study for your Oracle8 to Oracle8i upgrade certification, don't start with this book. There are
just too many technical mistakes. For example, the book always
seems to mix up DBMS_OLAP and DBMS_SUMMARY. These are technical mistakes, not just typos. Don't get me wrong there are plenty of typos also. This would not be so bad if errata were available. None was found at the designated web page specified in the book. It is nice to know that Oracle Press has not changed its way. Similar comments are being made about the book that is used to upgrade from Oracle8i to Oracle9i. My recommendation is to use the exams provided by the "Self Test Software" company. Not only are the test questions good but they will also respond to issues
that you may have with the question or answer. Oh, I don't have any financial interest in the "Self Test Software" company.
Rating: 
Summary: Good book
Review: The book can be good for those who don't have Oracle ILT (Instructor-Lead Training) or TBT (Technology-Based Training) material (as in my case).
There are too many errors in this book and if you don't pay good attention, you won't probably be able to notice them. You can find errors in the topics and especially in the exercises. The wrong answers (the book as well as the CD) always misleaded me. They often contradicted the discussed topic. I had to always double-check on my database or in Oracle documentation and other sources.
I e-mailed the author about the errors and he answered me that the fixes are going to be published ... but it was not the case.
The book lacks explanation on temporary LOB (large objects), and the main features of Oracle Universal Installer (as the Web enabled installations feature). Also Materialized View Logs don't exist !!!! In the 8i upgrade exam I had a few questions on these two topics.I passed the exam (75%) but what I can advice you (if you don't have ILT or TBT) is to combine all of these in your preparations: - Oracle8i Certified Professional DBA Certification Exam Guide (By: Jason Couchman) (this book)
- ExamCram Oracle8 to 8i Upgrade (By: Robert G. Freeman, Charles A. Pack)
- Oracle8i Upgrade CramSession PDF document ...BR>- Implement on an Oracle 8i database All of the above are complementary. Trust me on this. One last thing: it's too unfortunate that Oracle OCP team (or whoever is responsible for this at Oracle Education) didn't check this book roughly. It's all about quality folks, and not quantity!
Rating: 
Summary: Only average
Review: This book is all I used to study for the OCP upgrade exam and even though I passed first time round, I found the practice questions and test exams to be a poor preparation for the real thing. Detail in the book was but barely enough to pass.
Rating: 
Summary: I can't beleive they let him publish it!
Review: This book provides concise, explicit, summarized features for the Oracle8i upgrade exam. What I think would be relevant to prospective readers is that this book covers all the essential topics from the DBA 8i upgrade perspective. If you see the exam and try other books, the 8i stuff is too vast to be covered in a short period. This book however simplifies all that by providing the features is a very well laid out format (as per the DBA exam) and the exercise at the end of the chapter and the book are also very helpful. Definitely a book to be owned even if you are not appering for the exam but still need to find out all the features in Oracle8i (v/s Oracle 8). Thumbs up.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing mistakes throughout the book
Review: What a disappointment. I'm taking the test tomorrow, and I fear for my grade. Having worked with Oracle8i since its release, I was just looking for a quick read to brush up on the breadth of topics in the exam, and get reaquainted with the exam style for the Oracle tests. Boy I sure started with the wrong book. The amount of technical errors are astounding, particularly in the exam questions! In addition, the exam questions are poorly written and do not appear to have any relation to the style I will expect on the test. Wish me luck, and steer away from this title.
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