Oracle Programming with Visual Basic

by Nick Snowdown and Nick Snowdon

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0782123228
• ISBN13: 9780782123227
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: Sybex
• Length: 715 Pages
• Weight: 2.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.9" x 7.5" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Oracle Demystified, Not Just For VB Programmers

Oracle owns the relational database server market and Microsoft owns the desktop market. Visual Basic is the language of choice for the WinTell development world. One would expect dozens of books available to support this paradigm, but there are not.I recommend this book to everyone who must use Oracle. The first 10 chapters summarize Oracle better then Oracle summarizes Oracle. Snowdon assumes that the reader is familiar with SQL Server, but he does not assume ANY Oracle knowledge. By the time this book was available I had already written two production class programs for Oracle without the benefit of experienced Oracle DBA's to help me. This book would have saved me hours of frustration had it been available.I have just purchased Dov Trietsch's, "Visual Basic Oracle 8 Programmer's Reference," so I cannot compare the two.If you are going to survive in an Oracle environment, you will need to learn PL/SQL, Oracle's extended SQL programming language for triggers and stored procedures. Snowdon has an excellent introduction, but the definitive source is Steven Feurerstein's "Oracle PL/SQL Programming" by O'Reilly and Associates. I DO NOT recommend any of the Osborne books on Oracle, even though they are Oracle's vendor of choice. Oracle makes a big chunk of its money in consulting fees and, in my opinion, the Osborne documentation protects that revenue stream.

Nick Snowdon saved my Life!

I absolutely love the way the author gives an overview of each data acces technology followed by a "Typical Code" segment that gives a simple but adiquate sample of no b/s connection and data retrieval code. This alone earns the $32.00 but he goes on to give great detail on ADO, RDO, OO OLE etc. This book has become my number one refernce for RDO, ADO although I have many VB Books; simply beacuse it cuts to the chase. Not to mention; The Oracle foundation set in the first 10 chapters is as good as it gets without turning the book into a 2000 page Oracle textbook. (The PL/SQL section is actually pretty comprehensive)Other reviews said the writting style was dry but the author simply gets to the point in each area. There is no wasted space or fluff. I also appreciated the technique comparisons for optimizing data access for your given situation. I realy wish other programming books would use this layering writing style where the concepts are introduced lightly in dedicated pre-chapters (more than just a quick paragraph) and then presented in complete detail in later chapters. This way you can refernce each technology based on whether you need a quick (but adiquate)overview of code structure and object models or a comprehensive analysis of the methods etc. After reading this book an intermediate VB programer can start building solid VB front ends (and more)for Oracle. I hope Nick comes out with an updated book with the new MS technologies that support Oracle. Thanks Nick!

We need more books like this!

If we had had this book six months ago, we could have saved ourselves tremendous headaches and months of lost time.The book is very well strucured and explains the intricacies of Oracle to the uninitiated (we came from SQL Server) in a very readable way. It covers everything you need to get to work with Oracle (which is quite a bit), with emphasis on the most important point: the interface between VB and Oracle and how to optimize it.I wish all books on computing would be this well structured, comprehensive and practical!

Outstanding Book

The book is thorough and well designed. It is the absolute best coverage of VB and Oracle in one book. This book has saved countless hours of development time. Almost every aspect of development involving VB and Oracle are covered in enough detail for the beginner while being comprehensive enought for the experienced user.Some of the data objects covered have been updated by Microsoft since the books publication. The best example is that you can now retrieve parameters from a package in Oracle with the latest RDO. In the authors defense, it is impossible to keep up with technology advances. As with any book, if it references a limitation, check the vendor's web site for any updates.The hardest part about using the book is getting it back from other developers in the shop. This book is a must have for the serious VB / Oracle developer.

Great Book - Covers/Compares ADO RDO

As a "junior developer", I have been given my biggest VB project yet. I was a little nervous when we decided to use ORACLE for the DBMS, since I had never worked with ORACLE before. I needed a reference that specifically covered VB programming with ORACLE. This book is EXACTLY what I needed, and the only one I could find. Half of the book gives an overview of ORACLE (designed for developers who haven't worked with ORACLE), the other half covers the various connection methods (ADO/RDO). This book has already saved me a great deal of time. It's well written, with great code examples. I only wish there had been someway to include codes samples on a CD ROM. Overall - TERRIFIC.