SAVE YOURSELF MAJOR DISAPPOINTMENT -- DON'T BUY IT!!!

This book tries to do too many things at once. It succeeds at none.
For the informed reader, the skimpy chapters are at best overviews of well-known concepts. No new ideas are proposed. Ninety percent of the meager code centers around the author's useless dba_cool package: proactive object monitoring is much easier via excellent code provided in the 8i/9i Handbooks, and performance trending is a joy with scripts by Burleson. Bottleneck tuning must center on hardy SQL (Lewis, Adams), not on some esoteric package installed only on the author's databases. How many of you will be called to a site with a performance problem that has the author's package installed? Will you waste time installing it once you're there? Successful crisis management cannot rely on such methods. Serious texts on this subject must focus on efficient, time-tested methods applicable anywhere with very little effort. At times, it seems the book is one big advertisement to download dba_cool (don't!!!).

For the less knowledgeable reader, High-Performance Oracle is simply not a tutorial-style book, and does not contain sufficient explanations and examples for the reader to learn anything. Its choice of material is questionable, and -- before I threw it out in disgrace -- i often wondered who it was written for (despite the author's statement that it was aimed at both the dba and the developer). Important concepts are brushed aside for irrelevant comparisons between expensive tools of questionable relevancy for most DBAs. Advanced topics such as RAC aren't seriously covered. (Don't be mislead by the table of contents.)...

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• SAVE YOURSELF MAJOR DISAPPOINTMENT -- DON'T BUY IT!!!