Expert One-on-One Oracle (The Expert's Voice) [Paperback]

The introdution chapter alone is almost worth the cover price, Tom attempts to explain that all databases are different, no two are alike and they should *ALL* be respected for that, no-one DB is better than another, simply different. The book continues in this very down to earth common sense format.

Tom has an amazing talent of explaining things in a simple, consise form, without coming over as patronising or smug. He is not content to explain one theory and then expect you to guess the rest, he explains everything thoroughly, even if it seems so obvious at first glance. The book oozes, common sense, everything Tom writes about is in there for a reason, if it's not there, your told it's not there, and told why it's not there! His publishers must be given credit for allowing him the the extra space for the hundreds of examples.

As a 5 year Oracle DBA, I would reccomend this book to absolutely anyone who has to use Oracle in their day-to-day work, and I would recomend especially to anyone thinking about their OCP exams, as this will cover the fundamentals in such easy to remember detail, you can't fail.

Stop what your doing, put those other books into storage and make way for "Expert One-on-One"!!!

There are books by people that can program, books by writers who can write but do not quite understand what they are writing about, and there are a million other faults a book could have. However, this book has none of them.

Tom Kyte is at the very top of Oracle programming and he is a teacher who wants you to be able the do the same thing. Every topic in this book "reaches the ground". Tom starts from setting up your environment, and takes you through many high level exercises, showing you how to make it work, every single step of the way.

There is too much to describe it all, but as an example, there is a 70-page section on writing a C-Based external procedure. It starts with six pages of setting up your environment (listener, schema, server, exproc program, libraries), then the code in PL/SQL and C, how to make it, how to install it, how to test it. It ends with the answer to every error message you might get if you make a mistake.

The applications discussed are not just "interesting" and they do not just "work". There is a recurring theme in all of the applications and that is this that they scale. Tom has sections on bind variable, and then more on bind variables, and then more on bind variables, until the idea is branded on you that a "working" application is trivial unless it scales. You are not writing code for developers, but for end users who may do millions of transactions a day; that is the kind of code you want.

If you already know everything, you will learn more! Either way Tom's projects are complete, and well documented.

This is great book, and you will read all 1200 pages.

It is the way it is so well written; almost narratively. He gives details of the particular subject and interjects with the way it should 'really' be done. Oracle has so many different ways of doing the same thing and he points out the best ways.

There is also alot of technical information squeezed into a mere 1200 odd pages.

Even with limited Oracle knowledge this is the best introduction you could get if you've a few years general database experience already.

Read it and then read it again!!!