Oracle Database Administration: The Essential Refe: The Essential Reference

Oracle database administration requires a vast amount of information and an ability to perform a myriad of tasks--from installation to tuning to network troubleshooting to overall daily administration. Oracle provides many tools for performing these tasks; the trick is knowing what tool is right for the job, what commands you need to issue (and when), and what parameters and privileges you need to set. And, as every DBA knows, you need to know how do all this under pressure, while you face crisis after crisis.

This book provides a concise reference to the enormous store of information an Oracle DBA needs every day (as well as what's needed only when disaster strikes). It's crammed full of quick-reference tables, task lists, and other summary material that both novice and expert DBAs will use time and time again. It covers the commands and operations new to Oracle8, but also provides Oracle7 information for sites still running earlier versions.

Oracle Database Administration provides two types of material:

DBA tasks--chapters summarizing how to perform critical DBA functions: installation, performance tuning, preventing data loss, networking, security and monitoring, auditing, query optimization, and the use of various Oracle tools and utilities
DBA reference--chapters providing a quick reference to the Oracle instance and database, the initialization (INIT.ORA) parameters, the SQL statements commonly used by DBAs, the data dictionary tables, the system privileges and roles, and the SQL*Plus, Export, Import, and SQL*Loader syntax

The book also includes a resource summary with references to additional books, Web sites, and other online and offline resources of special use to Oracle DBAs. Oracle Database Administration is the single essential reference you'll turn to again and again. If you must choose only one book to use at the office, keep at home, or carry to a site you're troubleshooting, this will be that book.

Customer Reviews:

This book is very useful - I don't understand some comments

By A Customer - November 2, 1999

I really don't understand where some of the other comments on this book come from - I find it to contain lots of information I need, and I've been a DBA for 10 years. The source material of all Oracle books is ultimately the documentation, but these guys seem to have done a very good job of extracting what we need from the docs and presenting it in a useful form. The title is "Reference", so of course it will duplicate some Oracle material. To me, it looks like the init.ora chapter is pretty close to the docs, but they did cut out some unecessary words, and I'm not sure I could write those (boring) descriptions any better than Oracle already did, so why take a chance on introducing new errors? I think the book deserves 5 stars and the reviews that rate it low don't understand its purpose or have unrealistic expectations.

A very useful reference book. Keep it to hand !

By Andre Whittick Nasser - June 22, 2000

This book serves it purpose very well. As the title says, it is an essential reference, and that is exactly what I use it for. As some other reviewers point out, there is a lot of copy-and-paste work in it. But I think that is not a problem. In fact, very often it is much practical than navigating the bulk of on-line books, when you have to wait for the browser to load, search for a word or topic, or even when there's no computer at hand. Not to mention I can carry it around in my bag when necessary. I especially would like to emphasize the coverage of SQL commands, init.ora parameters, data dictionary views and utilities. Although I agree there are some inconsistent topics in this book and some mistakes as well, I think the people who complain about it either expected something very different or did not understand how useful it can be.

This is the greatest book since sliced bread

By A Customer - June 4, 1999

In this one book, the authors have distilled at least five Oracle manuals. Want SQL*Plus syntax? It's here. SQL syntax in a concise layout? Here. Every init parameter, descriptions of the various tools DBA's use most, plus a great summary of Oracle starting with an overview, all the way through installation, tuning, backup, and security. The list of steps for creating a new database is wonderful for new DBA's who's primary experience in this area is probably the Oracle course. As a new DBA, this one book will save me lots of time looking through PDF files of Oracle documentation. A great find - this book you'll pry from my cold dead fingers!