Rating: 
Summary: All you needs for Oracle8i DBA Certification
Review: This is my only source (and in my opinion, the only reliable source) of study materials for the OCP Oracle8i DBA Certification. No need to attend expensive courses, this set of 3 books alone is all you need to pass the exams. Forget about the books from Oracle Press, they are full of errors and don't always present materials directly revelant to the exams. I don't consider myself a very experienced Oracle DBA but I was able to complete all 5 exams within 2 months without any difficulties. Thanks Sybex!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Very impressed but a couple of holes.
Review: Used the Sybex suite of books with my work experience to prepare for the exams. The material is well presented and relevant to the exams. Lots of practice exams and chapter review questions help cement your knowledge. In the main I was very impressed and considered the books money well spent.
There were some areas which were annoying as they obviously hadn't even been proof read. Contradicting information, sometimes across books. For example LOG_CHECKPOINT_TIMEOUT is defined differently in the Backup & Recovery book than in the Performance Tuning book.
Some exam questions were marked incorrectly and the Bonus Exam for Performance Tuning on the CD is completely out of sync. Marked me as 22% where I had actually scored over 80%!!! Several questions ask for 2 answers but only allow you to put in one!!
This just proves the CD exams have not been tested. These errors were mainly on the Performance Tuning CD.
I'd still recommend you buy the books & CD and use them if trying to get through your 8i exams. I found practice exams invaluable for preparation.
In summary it gets my vote but more proof reading and testing would have created a 5 star product.
Rating:
Summary: It is a good set of books for OCP exam, but....
Review: Yes I say 'but'. I studied these books and passed all the OCP exams but I read original Oracle documents as well. Some white papers and online Oracle docs. Especially I needed additional docs for Backup and Recovery section. This part of the kit is not enough. When I finished this section of the kit, I wasn't completely sure if I understood the concepts clearly, then I read Backup and Recovery docs of Oracle which made my mind clear fully.The second problem with the kit is that there are many errors in test questions. The answer index is not correct for every exam, but the explanation of the answer shows the right answer though, but this is still a problem. After you complete the test you get frustrated a little bit. Another issue is that if you take the test using the CD, there are some questions which need to have check box answer items (to mark more than one) but they put radio button (only one option may be chosen), the next question has this time check box instead of radio button. Because of this you automatically make a mistake (it is not possible to mark more than while using radio button) Also I think in Network Administraion section, there is an extra course on the CD. You don't see this section in the book. Other than this book set I bought SYBEX's OCP preparation CD which includes many questions for each exam (4x50 questions for each exam), it has become very useful as well. But in general I can say it is a good reference for OCP exam but in order to learn concepts fully you may need additional sources like docs.oracle.com Thanks,
Ugur
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