Book Recommendations — a very personal selection.
When I used to teach Oracle courses, one of the most common questions from attendees was “What books about Oracle would you recommend?” As part of my preparation for teaching, I made it my business to buy and read most books that looked interesting — and found that most were a waste of time. There are one or two that are excellent, though, and if you can make the effort to read one or more of these you’ll be rewarded with genuine insights and accurate information from true database experts. This is a very personal selection, so another attribute they all share is that the writing quality is high, which makes them very readable.
Database In Depth — C. J. Date
I think I’ve found an even better starting point than the manuals, and it isn’t Oracle-specific: Chris Date’s Database In Depth from O’Reilly. I’ve read a number of Chris’ articles on dbdebunk and had the pleasure of attending a one-day seminar he gave in Edinburgh, but I’ve found this book more digestible. It’s still rigorous, but I love the way he’s taken what some feel is a slightly irrelevant academic subject and made it sing. A first-class book and thoroughly relevant to real-world database systems — even if you don’t agree with all of its content, you’ll be in a better position to state why you disagree.
Oracle Server Concepts Manual
Yes, the one that comes free with Oracle. If everyone who worked on Oracle systems took the time to sit down and read this book, the quality of Oracle systems would improve substantially. It’s detailed, usually accurate, and concentrates on how Oracle works. It costs nothing, is available online, and should be the first Oracle-specific book you read.
Expert One-on-One: Oracle — Tom Kyte
Established as the best book of its kind. Written by Tom Kyte, host of asktom.oracle.com, it is ostensibly aimed at developers but has a wealth of information for DBAs too. Although it’s monstrous in size, the solid structure makes it an easier read than you might think. Tom’s angle is that you shouldn’t treat Oracle as a ‘black box’. Amen!
Cost-Based Oracle / comp.databases.oracle.server — Jonathan Lewis
Along with Tom Kyte and Steve Adams, Jonathan Lewis seemed to answer the vast majority of questions posted to comp.databases.oracle.server at one point. He’s also written some of the best technical papers and user-conference presentations. A pretty good book all round, but I absolutely love the first-class discussion of redo and rollback in ‘Chapter 1 — What is Oracle?’.
Oracle Insights: Tales of the Oak Table
A compendium of chapters by different members of the Oak Table network containing a wealth of experience.
Oracle Design — Dave Ensor & Ian Stevenson
Any book that combines a distillation of the knowledge you might acquire over many years working with Oracle with an index entry for ‘Chocolate Teapots’ has to be recommended. A little difficult to categorise — although the title indicates it’s for database designers, it contains the sort of real-world knowledge every DBA and developer should have.
Oracle Performance Tuning — O’Reilly (‘the Bee book’)
The first decent Oracle book I read, known as ‘the Bee book’ because of the bees on the cover. A little bloated by its second edition and now rather dated, but it holds a fond place for me.