Rating: 
Summary: Paid for itself in 10 minutes
Review: A clear explaination of how to use multiple nested views has saved the day. I can now run a single query on my large table (the table has 83 Million rows in it) and it completes by in a few hours. I have enjoyed reading it and becoming more experienced in SQL. In the past I would use Perl/DBI to access the database but now I do it through sqlplus because of the large datasets I am working with. I wish I bought this book a loong time ago.
Rating:
Summary: Paid for itself in 10 minutes
Review: A clear explaination of how to use multiple nested views has saved the day. I can now run a single query on my large table (the table has 83 Million rows in it) and it completes by in a few hours. I have enjoyed reading it and becoming more experienced in SQL. In the past I would use Perl/DBI to access the database but now I do it through sqlplus because of the large datasets I am working with. I wish I bought this book a loong time ago.
Rating: 
Summary: Very Good and complete if database availabale.
Review: An excellent and well written book with a lot of examples for ANSI-standard SQL and traditional Oracle SQL extension. However, lack of the database used in the book severely reduces its usefulness if you want to try the queries against the database.
Buy this book if the authors can make the parts database and its data available. It is a very good book.
Rating: 
Summary: Incomplete for a book with "Mastering" in the title
Review: An important part of mastering Oracle SQL is knowing how the Oracle optimizer works in conjunction with the queries (90% of the mastering process is knowing how to optimize queries). This book instructs you to buy another book to get this information. I expected to have this important information included. Another O'Reilly book, "Mastering Regular Expressions", covers both syntax and performance issues, "Mastering Oracle SQL" should too. Although this book is useful, it's incomplete...
Rating:
Summary: Very good book -- worth the money
Review: As a value for the dollar, I give it 5 stars. I think it is most useful to people who have some SQL experience with Oracle and want to take their skills to the next level. I agree with some of the other reviewers that "Mastering" is a bit of a marketing stretch, particularly since there is limited coverage of Oracle optimizer issues. I would also have included some further discussion on how to read and use "Explain Plan" results. With those cavaets, however, I think that almost any SQL programmer will find something in this book to improve their skills. I found the discussion of subqueries to be very useful, as well as the OLAP queries. I read the book cover to cover. It is well written and the concepts are generally presented clearly.
Rating:
Summary: Very good book -- worth the money
Review: As a value for the dollar, I give it 5 stars. I think it is most useful to people who have some SQL experience with Oracle and want to take their skills to the next level. I agree with some of the other reviewers that "Mastering" is a bit of a marketing stretch, particularly since there is limited coverage of Oracle optimizer issues. I would also have included some further discussion on how to read and use "Explain Plan" results. With those cavaets, however, I think that almost any SQL programmer will find something in this book to improve their skills. I found the discussion of subqueries to be very useful, as well as the OLAP queries. I read the book cover to cover. It is well written and the concepts are generally presented clearly.
Rating:
Summary: Not for mastery, but good for reference
Review: I found this book to be very good as far as explaining Oracle SQL from the basics (DML, etc) to intermediate topics (unions, joins, etc.). I also felt that there are good examples and clear explanations of topics. However, I do not believe that mastery can be accomplished through this book.
Rating:
Summary: The title should be changed to "Advanced Oracle SQL"
Review: I like this book. It covers some advanced topics of Oracle SQL with some good examples. It doesn't cover everything of SQL statements and grammer, but it does teach you some techniques of writing good queries. It's hard to find similar book on the market.
Rating:
Summary: Best source for complete sql understanding..
Review: I own many Oracle books and this one definitely my favorite. This book covers topics on SQL other books cover but in the way this one does. Easy to read & understand. If you don't learn or understand sql from this book than you should remove Oracle if you installed on your machine. This book as mentioned on the cover page cover also have many examples on Oracle9i features. What I am doing writting this review.. Think about it .. book published on April 15, 2002 and have 3 reviews with 5 stars .. And you still need to read reviews to make up your mind about this book? If I were you will be reading and learning from this book and writting review just like this one..
Rating:
Summary: A very useful and enlightening book for anyone using Oracle.
Review: If you use Oracle SQL on a regular basis, and are looking for more power without turning to procedural SQL, greater understanding of what's possible with Oracle SQL, and overall greater mastery of the language, then this book definitely deserves a place in your library. A beginner might find him/herself a bit overwhelmed with the depth of the book, but with effort, the knowledge gained from it will prove invaluable. Those already familiar with Oracle and SQL, will still find it very enlightening and enabling. One very nice feature in the book is how the authors are very good to point out gotchas you might encounter, and particularly workarounds to limitations in Oracle's implementation of SQL. In this way the book falls squarely into the role for which it was intended, i.e., mastering the topic--knowing the inherent strengths and shortcomings of the product, and how to leverage the strengths while working around the shortcomings. Throughout the book the authors include coverage on new features availble in Oracle 9i, and they are very careful to point out which features covered are available in the various older releases of Oracle (as well as which ones are not). Mastering Oracle SQL passes the practicality and timeliness rating with flying colors. I've already been able to use several tricks I've learned from the book to great advantage in my daily work. In summary, if you want to get beyond the simple examples in most books covering SQL, and a better overall picture than what the references and the Oracle documentation have to offer, Mastering Oracle SQL will be an invaluable tool in your hands. With respect to the lack of an example database mentioned in other reviews, the authors have now posted a zip file in the 'Examples' section of the book's web site ... which includes sql to create and populate the example database used in the book.
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