Rating: 
Summary: Well written, but out of date
Review: Let me start by saying that had I purchased this book 2 years ago when it was first released, I would have given it 5 stars.This is a very well-written book, with good explanations and sample code. However, the book is fairly out of date, and much of the performance tuning suggestions he makes don't really apply as much when using the latest Oracle JDBC drivers and Oracle9 database. This book covers Oracle 8.1.6, and a lot of changes have been made between that release and 8.1.7 and Oracle9. I recommend the newer "Oracle 9i JDBC Programming" book by Jason Price for much more current coverage of this topic.
Rating: 
Summary: average book
Review: Looks like most of the material came from oracle documentation. Examples are very basic
Rating: 
Summary: Not bad
Review: Overall, this isn't a bad book, but I only rate it a 3 because I found the structure of the book confusing. It also only covers the Oracle8i database, not Oracle9i, which was disappointing.
Rating:
Summary: Not bad, but....
Review: This book gives good coverage of Oracle's JDBC implementation. That is about as far as it goes. This is just too close to being documentation. When purchasing books on a specific technology, I am looking for the author's insight. Specific things the author learned while working with it. Give me best practices, suggestions, things to avoid, etc. Tell me what I won't learn from Oracle's docs, don't just rewrite them.
Rating: 
Summary: A workmanlike book which achieves its aims
Review: This book is for Java developers who need to get the most out of using JDBC and Oracle (version 8.1.6). Choosing a specific database allows a lot more detail. Other JDBC books may skip database-dependent parts of the API; this book even gives code examples for the hard stuff. It is slow to read end-to-end, but "dipping" works well - there's almost always a helpful code example nearby. There are problems, though. The author is obviously very familiar with Oracle, but lacks the experience to make comparisons with other products, this book won't help you choose when to use Oracle or whan another system might be more appropriate. Also I noticed other signs of lack of research - he sometimes gets abbreviations wrong, and the Java code is not particularly well-written. The big problem for me is that the book assumes you only ever use Oracle. There is no consideration of code portability, it offers no wisdom about avoiding or encapsulating proprietary Oracle-specific extensions. The techniques in this book could easily lock your product into Oracle, worse, they might even lock your product into a specific version of Oracle. The book has minor discussion of extra features in Oracle8i and Oracle9i, but nothing about JDBC 3. It's less helpful if you are using a version older than 8.1.6, too. If you (or your management) have already sold your soul to Oracle, get this book. If you might need to use other databases, get a more generic book, but keep this one for those times when only a specific Oracle feature will do the trick.
Rating:
Summary: Doesn't cover Oracle9i in depth
Review: This book is incredibly well written. It was able to walk me through the nesscessary items I had to understand. The key to knowledge is understanding, not just memorizing. I am looking forward to future projects.
Rating:
Summary: Informational Java w/Oracle
Review: This book is incredibly well written. It was able to walk me through the nesscessary items I had to understand. The key to knowledge is understanding, not just memorizing. I am looking forward to future projects.
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