Oracle 8i: The Complete Reference Book

This whopping 1,300-page book is a reference book par excellence, and the CD-ROM is equally useful, being the complete and searchable text (albeit in the stranglehold of Acrobat's .PDF format) with, ready to copy and paste, all the example tables and code. Divided into nine parts, it begins with critical database concepts which include the basics of relational databases, surprisingly with a perpetuation of the myth that the word "relational" comes from the fact that data in one table is related to data in another, rather than from set theory. Object-relational and Web-enabled databases and SQL syntax are also outlined. There is a great deal on the SQL querying language in this book: 400 pages on SQL and SQL*Plus (Oracle's querying front-end/reporting tool), 50 more on Oracle's PL/SQL extensions to SQL and 300 pages of alphabetical reference of commands from SQL, PL/SQL and SQL*Plus. Other parts cover Java, two "Hitchhiker's Guides" to Oracle's optimizer and 8i's data dictionary, object-related databases and designing for performance. The style is readable if somewhat lacking in character and the book is destined to be used, as indeed the title states, as reference material rather than a teaching aid. The CD-ROM electronic text version effectively gives you two copies of this useful work: installed on your laptop, it can be always to hand--and you certainly wouldn't choose to tote the hard copy around all the time. --Mark WhitehornRead More