Oracle SQL Tuning & CBO Internals

Rating:
Summary: Horrible! DO NOT BUY!
Review: First, I'm not one of the contributors to this book unlike others here who of course rated it highly, putting their interests first. Amazon, you should do a better job of checking someone's role before you let the rating get skewed by unscrupulous contributors.

Second, I did my PhD in this area and teach graduate school in database theory. So I was excited to read the description.

Unfortunately, the other reviewers are accurate: this covers multiple versions which are not interchangeable; has errors; covers nothing not available on the Oracle website; uses many different authors. I found it very misleading that the publisher let a compilation of mostly old articles pass as a new text with this title. Of course Rampant also says that books in this series are for professionals who know the concepts and it keeps its books at 200 pages or less to be concise. When I last checked the number of people who really knew optimizer internals was very small. Oh, and this declaration was on page 341. I guess Rampant needs more editing expertise.

Bottom line don't waste your money. Don't contribute to the hacks using this as marketing for their consulting efforts.

Rating:
Summary: Good book on SQL Tuning
Review: Good book and worth the cost if you need help with SQL Tuning.

Rating:
Summary: Intresting Book with wide appeal
Review: I found this book intresting and a useful addition to my library. The information spans multple version ( I and many I work with still support Oracle8i) which is an advantage. A hard read from front to back, buy great for looking up specific information on specific SQL tuning needs.

Rating:
Summary: Great Plain-English overview of a complex subject
Review: I think that Kim Floss has done an excellent job in making a very complex process understandable and clear. Oracle cost-based SQL optimizer tuning is inherently complex and very difficult to explain and Floss has risen to the challenge.

Overall, I highly recommend this book to anyone who must tune their Oracle SQL.

Rating:
Summary: Big disappointment
Review: If this book had been sent to market as "'Intro to SQL Tuning with Reprints of Previously Published Material by Various Gurus and Breezy Transition Paragraphs by Kimberly,' editor K. Floss available in Large Print Edition Only" I wouldn't feel so ripped off. In that case, my only complaints would have to do with various inaccuracies. Basically, if you know enough about Oracle to be interested in CBO internals, you probably know everything in this silly little book.

Rating:
Summary: Don't buy it!!!
Review: Please, don't buy it. Not only it is not well structured, but it contains not up-to-date content (some parts only apply to 8i) and a lot of miskakes as well!

Rating:
Summary: Lots of great information on SQL Internals
Review: This is the best book I've seen for tuning Oracle SQL.
It is well written, up to date (includes 8i to 10g info), and it is full of examples and real world experiences.

Many of the Oracle books I've purchased (especially the tuning references) are just sitting on the shelf collecting dust. They're too big, and filled with a lot of 'dead weight'. I've already read this book and gathered more useful knowledge than all my other sql tuning books combined.

Every Oracle developer and DBA should read this book.