Portable DBA: Oracle

Rating:
Summary: Not very helpfull
Review: After several atempts to use this book I switched back to Oracle online documaentation. A book is a little bit messy. It looks like this book was designed for DBA's who doeasn't have access to Oracle documentation. From page 433 to page 579 the book consists copy-paste diagrams from oracle documentation. Waste of paper.

I expected professional recomedations in this book, but I've got notes from the oracle documention.


Rating:
Summary: A true MUST HAVE reference book
Review: Like many Oracle DBAs, I have plenty of reference books that are useful. The problem I run into is that some tend to be quite large (i.e. 1000+ pages) and the information I need is contained in one paragragh from this book, one chapter from another and a schema diagram from yet another. I have long searched for one book to take with me to customer sites that contains examples of command usage, diagrams and concise explanations. Enter Robert Freeman's Portable DBA: Oracle.

This book is just what is claims to be: a portable reference for topics such as creating/removing a database, managing undo/rollback segments, building indexes and using the import/export utilities. This is just some of the subject matter covered. There are also appendices containing Oracle syntax, data dictionary views and initialization parameters.

Note that this book is not a tutorial and assumes you are knowledgeable in at least the basics of being an Oracle DBA. Having said that, it is full of examples to help jog your memory in how to use a certain command as well as giving you enough infomation so that you can research a command more fully in other reference materials.

Lest I forget, Mr. Freeman's writing style is easy to read and instructional without getting too technical. He knows his stuff and knows how to teach as well.

At just under 600 pages, you will not be carrying this in your back pocket. But, if you want one DBA reference book to take with you in your travels, this is the one.

Highly recommended!!!


Dwayne Cox
Oracle DBA for over 6 years