{"id":1509,"date":"2009-07-22T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-22T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/?p=1509"},"modified":"2009-07-22T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-07-22T12:00:00","slug":"a-top-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/2009\/07\/22\/a-top-book\/","title":{"rendered":"A TOP Book"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nWell, I have always been and probably always will be poor
\nat coming up with snappy, punning titles for blog posts, so it’s the
\nbest I can do.<\/p>\n

I
\nbought Troubleshooting Oracle Performance<\/a> by Christian Antognini<\/a> a while ago (when it
\nwas first published, I think) but, as seems to be my way these days,
\nit’s taken a lot longer to read the damned thing. (OK, maybe it’s me
\nthat’s damned and not the book, but hopefully you get the general idea.) <\/p>\n

It’s an excellent book and I’ve recommended it to so many people that it occurred to me the other day that, rather than fretting over a ‘proper’ review, all I really need to do is post thoughts similar to those I’ve had in conversation when recommending it. <\/p>\n

Strengths
<\/strong>
\nThis book is bang up to date with the latest features so even if
\nyou think you know a lot about Oracle, an in-depth treatment of
\nfeatures that you may not have worked with much yet could prove very
\nuseful. Oh, and it’s not like most of those New Features books, which
\nseem like a regurgitation of the New Features manual. It’s obvious that
\nChris has dug around in these features for many weeks and months to try to
\nunderstand how they work.<\/p>\n

It’s not all new features and it reminds me a little of Tom Kyte’s first book in having a long first section which covers fundamentals very clearly, followed by chapters covering a massive range of different topics that you can dip in and out of as you need to.<\/p>\n

It’s both practical<\/em> and rigorous<\/em>. Some of my favourite Oracle books are the most rigorous but although their content is important for understanding Oracle, they don’t always help you do your job better tomorrow<\/em>. I can virtually guarantee that there will be something in this book that will help you do your job better tomorrow (if you stay up tonight reading it 😉) I’ve read lots of book descriptions that suggested this, but few that have delivered.<\/p>\n

It will become a valued reference. I keep hold of very few Oracle books. There are several reasons for that and some would no doubt send book romantics over the edge but the fact is that I find most of them pretty much useless on first reading and so they become waste paper on a bookshelf. I tend to give them away or if they’re really bad … (I’d better shut up there and consider the book romantics…) The few I keep are never going anywhere else, though,\u00a0 because I know I’ll probably need to come back to them one day and re-read a section. This is one of those books (and, really, we’re talking about a total of less than a dozen books in this domain).<\/p>\n

It’s written as much from the perspective of the Developer as the DBA. In fact it’s written from that dual perspective that most people realise is where we all need to be. Of all the Oracle books I love, this and Tom Kyte’s various books seem the most developer-focussed.<\/p>\n

Like all of the best books, there are plenty of examples with supplied scripts so you can play around with things yourself.<\/p>\n

It doesn’t contain a lot of Maths. (Note – this is why some books get reviews before others, Toon<\/a>, because they’re easier for me to read 😉)<\/p>\n

Weaknesses<\/strong> (because I always have to find some)<\/p>\n

Christian’s
\na smart chap and sometimes I detected a little conflict in where he has
\ndrawn the boundaries of how deep he should go. There are times when I
\nthought it was a little too deep for the audience and times when I
\nthought it wasn’t deep enough. But that stuff’s incredibly<\/em> difficult to judge and I’m just trying to find stuff to comment on 😉<\/p>\n

The self-contained chapters are great to dip into but if you’re reading it
\ncover-to-cover then you’ll keep reading a phrase something like ‘although
\nyou could do this in the GUI, if you understand how to do it from the command line,
\nthe GUI is easy, so I won’t talk much about it’. The good side of this
\nis that you can read chapters in isolation and I expect many will, me
\nincluded. The bad side is it could have been edited a little more
\ntightly to save me reading the same line what felt like many times. I
\ndon’t have the book in front of me, so the quote will be wrong, but
\nthat particular line is still stuck in my head and I’m trying to get rid of it! 😉<\/p>\n

I can’t think of any Oracle developers or DBAs I
\nknow who this book wouldn’t be very suitable for and would learn at
\nleast a few things from, expert or not, and I always try to recommend it during any classes I teach as a source for further study.<\/p>\n

Good stuff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, I have always been and probably always will be poor at coming up with snappy, punning titles for blog posts, so it’s the best I can do. I bought Troubleshooting Oracle Performance by Christian Antognini a while ago (when it was first published, I think) but, as seems to be my way these days,… Continue reading A TOP Book<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":903,"url":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/2005\/11\/12\/book-review-cost-based-oracle-fundamentals\/","url_meta":{"origin":1509,"position":0},"title":"Book Review: Cost-Based Oracle – Fundamentals","date":"November 12, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's a review of Jonathan Lewis' new book that I've just posted on amazon.co.uk Here is your review the way it will appear: An Exceptional BookReviewer: Doug Burns from EDINBURGH, Lothians United KingdomIt's my favourite Oracle book of the many I've read (apologies to Tom Kyte) and I'm not expecting\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 7 comments","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1374,"url":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/2008\/01\/08\/book-review-oracle-11g-new-features\/","url_meta":{"origin":1509,"position":1},"title":"Book Review – Oracle 11g New Features","date":"January 8, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I remember I said I wouldn't do this any more, but last October, someone from Oracle Press contacted me by email because they'd noticed the following words on my website. \"However, those aspects are well dealt with in Oracle Wait Interface: A Practical Guide to Performance Diagnostics and Tuning by\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 2 comments","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1427,"url":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/13\/book-review-oracle-asm\/","url_meta":{"origin":1509,"position":2},"title":"Book Review – Oracle ASM","date":"August 13, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"[Disclaimer - this is a review of a free copy I received from Oracle Press in the UK]Well, it turned out that I had requested the ASM book (or \"Oracle Automatic Storage Management: Under-the-Hood & Practical Deployment Guide\", to give it it's full title) as one to review. 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Well I don't know what I was thinking, because the \"Oracle Database 11g DBA Handbook\" turned up instead the other week. I distinctly recall the ASM book being one of the ones I was\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 3 comments","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":929,"url":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/2005\/10\/21\/book-review-oracle-insights-tales-of-the-oak-table\/","url_meta":{"origin":1509,"position":5},"title":"Book Review: Oracle Insights, Tales of the Oak Table","date":"October 21, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been looking for something to read about Oracle recently and couldn't wait until Jonathan Lewis' CBO book arrived. 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