It's a large book divided into two major sections on Oracle from a VB programmer's point of view and two major sections on VB from Oracle's end. Within these are detailed chapters on every aspect of Oracle.

You start with the basics of Oracle: architecture, database creation, design and implementation. In the second section you're introduced to queries, PL/SQL and stored procedures. In the third part you look at the client side, Oracle access using VB, VB design issues and Data Access Objects while the last section tackles Remote Data Objects, ODBCDirect, ActiveX Data Objects and Oracle Objects for OLE.

There are lots of Oracle code examples but, because you're a VB programmer with commercial experience, the amount of VB code is vanishingly small. However, you will gain practical as well as theoretical experience in the latest remote database handling features of VB including RDO in VB 6.0 as well as Oracle's OO4O.

If the author's purpose is to provide a thorough grasp of how Oracle operates behind the scenes from a VB users perspective he succeeds brilliantly. If you plan to move into an Oracle environment take this book with you. --Steve Patient

Synopsis
This text provides information on using Visual Basic with Oracle, helping to build quick and effective programs for inputting information into an Oracle database or creating reports.