This is a thorough book on Oracle RMAN for sure. But it does a poor job of clearly and concisely answering the question: "How do I back up my database with RMAN?" It is 100 pages into the book before you ever see a hands-on command. Before that it goes into great detail about the database services and memory system. While that is important in the long-run to know, it is totally unnecessary to make your first backup. Even after getting to the meat of RMAN, the book doesn't provide a quick reference summary or a "cheat sheet." If time is not of the essence and you prefer an academic approach, then this is a very good book. But if you are in a real world situation where you need to perform a backup today, then I would search for RMAN on YouTube. There are several short videos that demonstrate what takes hours for this book to accomplish.