Book Information
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Book Reviews
Review by Gabor Szabo, November 2002
When you read a book review it is also important to know the
background of the reviewer. It is important to know his point
of view. So here is mine:
I have been working with databases for a couple of years now but I am
not a DBA and in most of the cases I use Perl to access the database.
I touch the user interface of the database mainly to try SQL
statements and to debug my application. I have been using Oracle
for a couple of monthes now as I am writing a Perl application with
Oracle back-end.
This booklet is divided into two parts. The first 60 pages cover
mainly the Oracle SQL and the next 50 pages are the SQL*Plus command
reference. It covers Oracle 8 and Oracle 9i with clear marking
which command is available only in the new version of the database.
Going through the book gave me an opportunity to learn about a number
of SQL statements that are not available in other databases. Of course
you don't get any deep understanding of commands but you get the idea
and this helps later. Among lots of other details I read about
number and date formating which already saved me some time when I
needed that info a few days later.
Actually - and this should be another disclaimer - I am not a fan
of Pocket Reference books. I think their content should be part of the
help available with the application. But I had to wait in
a queue for 3 hours somewhere so it was also a life saver that I could
have this booklet with me.
In general I recommend this book if you are a new or practicing Oracle DBAs
and if you are not satisfied with the on-line help
or if you are a database programmer and need a quick overview of the
Oracle SQL and the command line interface to the database.