Oracle in a Nutshell

By Rick Greenwald, David C Kreines, David C. Kreines

Book Overview

Introduced a quarter-century ago, the Oracle database remains the leading enterprise relational database management system (RDBMS) in the world. Oracle is a complex system, offering a myriad of products, languages, and tools. Frequent updates, releases, and editions complicate the ability of Oracle users to keep up with the huge amounts of frequently changing information about the database and its capabilities. The goal of Oracle in a Nutshell is to pull together the most essential information on Oracle architecture, syntax, and user interfaces. The content and format of this book, an admirable addition to O'Reilly's respected In-a-Nutshell line, combine to boil down vital Oracle commands, language constructs, parameters, and file formats in a succinct and highly accessible desktop reference. Oracle in a Nutshell covers the information that database administrators PL/SQL and Java developers, and system, network, and security administrators need as they manage Oracle databases and write code for these databases. It includes: Oracle Foundations--Overview of the Oracle architecture (memory structures and fundamental concepts), Oracle's various editions and packaging options, summary of the initialization file parameters and data dictionary views, and fundamentals of Oracle's concurrency scheme, security mechanisms (privileges, profiles, roles), and networking files (TNSNAMES.ORA, SQLNET.ORA, LISTENER.ORA, DAP.ORA, NAMES.ORA, CMAN.ORA) and options. Oracle Languages--Syntax summary for SQL language statements, SQL function calls PL/SQL language statements and characteristics, PL/SQL built-in package headers, and Java (JDBC and SQLJ) interfaces to the Oracle database. Oracle Tools--Commands provided with SQL*Plus, SQL*Loader, Import and Export, Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN) and other backup/recovery methods, Oracle Enterprise Manager, and various performance tuning tools (Explain Plan, TKPROF, AUTOTRACE, UTLBSTAT, UTLESTAT, Statspack). Appendixes--Summary of Oracle datatypes, operators, expressions, conditions, numeric and date formats, and resources for additional reading.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0596003366
• ISBN13: 9780596003364
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media
• Length: 928 Pages
• Weight: 2.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.7" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

For experienced developers

I agree with another reviewer who said if you know Oracle this could be the book for you. I'm tired of digging through huge books to answer a simple syntax question. This book enables me to get concise answers quickly. But, if you're an Oracle neophyte this is NOT the book for you.

Definitive Oracle work

This is a huge book, and it's tough to consider it a "nutshell" (I'd hate to see the squirrel)---but it is far and away the most accurate and complete of all the Oracle mega-references out there. If you've tried to muddle through Oracle documentation, this is really a breath of fresh air.

Excellent Reference

As an Oracle developer, I have been frustrated reading all the Oracle documentations. It's hard to locate what you want to know in those big and thick documentations. I was thrilled to find this book -- it really is a great reference and it can basiclly replace my collection of some other Oracle books. This book is very well-organized into different topics including architecture, data dictionary, SQL, PL/SQL, JAVA and much...

Everything All In One Place

This book is a terrific reference. I love having one place to look for all of those "simple" questions that come up -- the syntax for a particular function, how to format a column heading in SQL*Plus, what does a particular function from a package do. It comes in very handy when reading someone else's code. This book does not bog you down with lengthy explanations. It is not intended to replace training. It just pulls everything...

At last! A single Oracle reference work (that's readable)

In a word - indispensible! As usual, O'Reilly come through with the goods again, this time on a topic that most people would believe impossible to condense usefully into a single volume.What's more, it is actually possible to simply read many of the lucid descriptive sections - for example the section describing the locking scheme is a model that all database documentation writers should take note of.Of course, this book...