Rating: 
Summary: Wealth of Knowledge and Guidance...
Review: Geoff Ingram's book is one of the best Performance-based texts out on the market. Very few books provide the wealth of knowledge that Geoff Ingram does in this book. The sections on SQL tuning and Indexes provided information rarely covered in other Oracle books.What I liked most from this book was Geoff's comments about Oracle and the ISV (Independent Software Vendor). I'm a performance engineer from a respected ISV that primarily uses Oracle as its RDBMS. His commentary was so on about how the ISV in most cases does not understand the role of Oracle in their solution as it relates to tuning... I hope to see more books from Geoff Ingram in the future. It would be nice to see a follow-up book dedicated to SQL tuning... Regards, Steve
Rating: 
Summary: The most 'REAL' Oracle book in sometime
Review: Having spent many years in the Oracle industry its suprising how many mediocre books find their way onto bookstore shelves. This item however, covers everything in a most comprehensive and realstic fashion, dispelling the many myths about Oracle database admin work, but more importantly all the non-DBA activities and essentials that people frequently ignore or overlook. A works, that is without doubt based on many years practical field experience, fencing with both sys admins and application developers alike. It covers virtually every element of making Oracle systems work in the real world and even manages to touch on Linux/RAC and Standby systems.
Rating:
Summary: What a nice surprise
Review: I bought this book just for one reason, Chapter 22 Oracle Real Application Clusters. I was expecting to have 200 pages just for this chapter, but it has only just enough pages to tell us what we really need to know strait to the point. After reading the this chapter I was so impressed with the clarity and usefulness of it that I decide to read the rest of the book.
I'm glad I did it. After many years in the business one would think that he knows a lot. Most of the time we forget that there is someone out there that know a bit more.
All the other 27 chapters are written in the same concise and precise way. This book is worth any single dollar.
Regardless if you are an expert or novice just read the book and keep it as a reference for the future.
Geoff, thanks.
Rating:
Summary: A must for DBA's
Review: I have dozens of books on Oracle and this one is right up there with the best. The author obviosuly has a wealth of experience and its the first Oracle book I've read that acknowledges some people run Oracle to actually achieve something in a business environment and not just for the academic exercise. Its therefore full of practical advice and is also bang up to date. I would certainly recommend it to any DBA in a mission-critical environment who wants to make their life a whole lot easier.
Rating:
Summary: Real advice for real world Oracle systems - Excellent
Review: I have read many Oracle books over the years, but this one has to be one of the best I have come across. Its focus is not simply on describing the hot new features of the RDBMS (although it does that as well), but rather on how they can be utilized to best effect within a complex database environment. The book is clearly written by someone with a wealth of experience managing solutions in a high availability environment where any outage hurts the bottom line. In a step-by-step approach Mr Ingram is laying out the foundations for what is ultimately a more manageable and better performing database environment. This book can save your firm money - highly recommended!!
Rating:
Summary: new approach may annoy old school DBAs
Review: I love this book! It covers many subjects areas in depth that other books just don't, see contents list. Oracle brags about why 9.2 can reduce admin overhead by 40% and this book shows you how. Old school DBAs that spend all their time on defrag, obsessed with file placement, STATSPACK for tuning etc probably won't like it. I finally stopped using dd and tar for backup and started using RMAN as a result of this book. Now i wish i did it years ago. If you want to manage Oracle in the future not the past, buy this book.
Rating:
Summary: new approach may annoy old school DBAs
Review: i love this book! It's maybe the first book to cover the end to end management of Oracle completely not just the server, in a modern way. Oracle brags about how admin is easier these days and this book shows why it's true. But there should be a warning on the cover. Old school DBAs who spend lots of time on row chaining, microplacement of database files, fragmentation, STATSPACK (which is covered) for performance etc won't like it. I finally ditched tar and dd for backups and started using RMAN based on the RMAN chapter in this book. I just wish i'd done it years ago, but i guess I was stuck in denial. If you want your eyes opened on how to manage Oracle in the future not the past buy this book!
Rating:
Summary: A must for DBA's
Review: This book certainly is a book a DBA would like to own. It's down to earth spirit and approach is quite unique. It does cover many aspects of Oracle, and well. What I found weak with this book is that on many topics discussed, the cons are not as adequately treated, or at places, completely missing. As the saying goes, "what you don't know may hurt you."
Rating:
Summary: great 9.2 coverage and fantastic DbCool software
Review: this book is pretty much the only Oracle book I've seen that covers 9.2 features in depth. Ingram's DbCool GUI software from author's website is a great companion to the book, but not mandatory. I use it daily alongside TOAD but DbCool is free (!?). DbCool explain plain shows the incredibly useful filter and access predicates new in 9.2 plan.
Buried away on the website for the book (see back page of book)is loads of free stuff which some Oracle consultants charge for, audit, healthcheck, jpeg space charts and nice doc on Change Manager and native compiling for PL/SQL and Java. Hats off to the author for all the free stuff and long may it continue. Book worth every penny.
Rating: 
Summary: SAVE YOURSELF MAJOR DISAPPOINTMENT -- DON'T BUY IT!!!
Review: This book tries to do too many things at once. It succeeds at none.
For the informed reader, the skimpy chapters are at best overviews of well-known concepts. No new ideas are proposed. Ninety percent of the meager code centers around the author's useless dba_cool package: proactive object monitoring is much easier via excellent code provided in the 8i/9i Handbooks, and performance trending is a joy with scripts by Burleson. Bottleneck tuning must center on hardy SQL (Lewis, Adams), not on some esoteric package installed only on the author's databases. How many of you will be called to a site with a performance problem that has the author's package installed? Will you waste time installing it once you're there? Successful crisis management cannot rely on such methods. Serious texts on this subject must focus on efficient, time-tested methods applicable anywhere with very little effort. At times, it seems the book is one big advertisement to download dba_cool (don't!!!). For the less knowledgeable reader, High-Performance Oracle is simply not a tutorial-style book, and does not contain sufficient explanations and examples for the reader to learn anything. Its choice of material is questionable, and -- before I threw it out in disgrace -- i often wondered who it was written for (despite the author's statement that it was aimed at both the dba and the developer). Important concepts are brushed aside for irrelevant comparisons between expensive tools of questionable relevancy for most DBAs. Advanced topics such as RAC aren't seriously covered. (Don't be mislead by the table of contents.)...
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