Here’s a review of Jonathan Lewis’ new book that I’ve just posted on amazon.co.uk<\/p>\n
Here is your review the way it will appear: <\/p>\n
An Exceptional Book<\/b>
Reviewer: Doug Burns<\/b> from EDINBURGH, Lothians United Kingdom<\/p>\n
It’s my favourite Oracle book of the many I’ve read (apologies to Tom Kyte) and I’m not expecting it to be surpassed any time soon. <\/p>\n
Despite being a fan of Jonathan’s work, I probably didn’t like Practical Oracle 8i as much as others did. Not because it wasn’t a great book in parts but because it didn’t hang together properly for me. I felt the same way about Steve Adam’s Oracle Internals book – great material but I wasn’t sure how well it worked as a book.<\/p>\n
This book is different. It takes a complex and essential component of the Oracle architecture and teaches it from the basics up to the complex using an elegant tutorial style. Jonathan doesn’t stint on the deep detail that’s necessary to understand the subject but he doesn’t baffle you with science either. You might need to read it a little more slowly and carefully than you would some third-party Oracle books, and play around with the plentiful small examples, but that’s because you’re getting enough information to justify the purchase cost (and much more) and you know when you get to the end that you’ll understand the subject *properly*. With that understanding, it’ll be much easier to work out why the CBO is doing something that you’ve never seen it do before. As always with technical subjects, everything springs from the fundamentals.<\/p>\n
No matter what your involvement with Oracle is, you can not avoid the optimiser. Have you ever watched Oracle consultants, contractors, developers or DBAs deciphering execution plans as best they can and then flailing around trying out different solutions until they get lucky? (and then everyone thinks they’re a magician!) More honestly, how often do you find yourself deciphering execution plans as best you can and then flailing …. (you get the picture). One of the reasons why people struggle with the CBO is that Oracle’s documentation of the CBO isn’t great. I love Oracle documentation in general but I think Jonathan’s book blows any Oracle CBO documentation out of the water. (As he highlights in the book, the CBO is difficult to document well because it’s a constantly moving target.) I bet you there’ll be plenty of people in Oracle Support with this book on their desk!<\/p>\n
If you think you’re a serious Oracle professional, you should own this book, devour the contents and experience plenty of those moments when the lights go on and you think – ‘Oh, right, so *that’s* why it does that’. That includes DBAs who’ll learn something new about how their decisions on free lists, block sizes and so on can affect application performance. I can’t imagine that there is anyone out there who won’t learn something new from this book and you’ll finally be able to take a *structured approach* to solving CBO problems instead of just guessing.<\/p>\n
Remember when not many people had read Tom Kyte’s ‘Expert One-on-One’ book and you were at a distinct advantage because you had? Yet you still felt you had to spread the word because it was so good? Now that many more people have read Tom’s book, the penny is starting to drop about bind variables, the dangers of database independent applications and so on.<\/p>\n
That’s what this book is like. An absolute classic and the only book you’ll ever need to understand the cost based optimiser (apart perhaps for Volumes Two and Three that will cover more specialised subjects).<\/p>\n
Buy it – you won’t be disappointed.<\/p>\n
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Frankly, it could have been a lot longer and more fawning because I found myself constantly thinking – ‘and, do you know what else is great about this book …) but I was concerned that people might start to think I want to have his babies or something. Best try to maintain a little dignity! Seriously, folks, this book is a model of excellence in Oracle writing. Buy it or you’ll regret it later …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"