Book Review: Oracle DBA handbook 7.3 Edition.
By Kevin Loney. Published by Oracle Press/Osborne Books. ISBN 0-07-882289-0. UK Price 29.99
Despite the much-hearalded arrival of Oracle 8, there is no doubt that the majority of production applications will continue to use Oracle 7.3 for the time being. Therefore, I am convinced that there is a need for the type of book which Kevin Loney has written.
The book attempts to be a comprehensive reference for several different types of people. There is the danger that an attempt to address so many types of people would end up satisfying none - content and clarity can easily be lost. However, this does not seem to have happened.
The first part (Database Architecture) is an extremely helpful introduction to the Oracle 7 architecture. Experienced DBAs will probably dive right in to Part 2 (Database Management) which covers such topics as Monitoring Rollback Segments etc. Each chapter guides the user through the concepts of each component, before moving on to practical issues.
The book contains a number of pithy comments such as "Rollback segments are the problem children of an Oracle database. No matter how well-behaved the rest of the database is, they will almost always require special attention. The author then goes on to talk about why Rollback segments are important, how to activate them, and how space is used within segments.
I was also impressed with the way in which Part 3 covers the various add-on products (Oracle*CASE, Financials etc.) But where are the entries for Designer/Developer 2000?
The final section on Networking covers both SQL*Net 1 and 2.
One of the few criticisms I have of this book is why is there so much information on Oracle 6 ? I suspect that it would make the book a bit more readable if the references to Oracle 6 were removed.
Despite the minor criticisms, this book has proved extremely useful and has become "A first place to look" for Oracle configuration issues.
These days, books often incorporate a diskette with the script commands etc. Unfortunately, none is included. There are a lot of example scripts to work through !
If you only have space for one book in you DBA's bookshelf, then make it this one.
Highly Recommended.
For reference, you could look up the publisher's home page;- http://www.osborne.com .
This article is based on an award-winning article by Dennis Adams in the Spring 1998 issue of "Relate", the UK Oracle User Group Magazine.