Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
 Long-winded May 20, 2008
PRO's:
- Detailed guide covering material on OCA and OCP exams
- OCA is Part 1, OCP is Part 2 of book
CON's:
- Author is VERY long-winded.
- Not enough use of diagrams
- Not updated for Oracle 10g Release 2 (current exam topic)
If you like long, boring discussions on a topic so much that by the end of the section you forgot what the main point was, then this book is for you! However, if you like short and straight to the point, you won't get that here.
The author tends to ramble on forever on each topic. It makes reading not only boring, but confusing. Use of a few simple diagrams like those found in the Sybex books would have gone a long way. It would have clarified the point without lenghty paragraphs. I found that the author tends to repeat himself often, too.
The main problem with this style of writing is that you will miss cruicial details because they're burried deep in a sea of text. Also, you CANNOT quickly skim through the book for a brief refresher.
I would have rather seen the book written such that the main points were stated first, followed by supporting detail and a diagram or two. So, you would be able to quickly skim through the first sentence of each paragraph or so to get the gist without deep reading.
It's painful to read through this book!
Giving it 3 stars because as painful as it is to read through, I am learning from it and it will help me pass the exam. But it could have been MUCH better.
Decent guide, but don't expect it to do all the work... January 22, 2008
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
I recently took the Oracle 10g Administration Workshop class and purchased this book in preparation for the OCA exam. While the book itself did a great job of covering some of the basic, under-the-hood topics you need to know (not just for the test, but to be a decent DBA), it fell short in a few areas.
1. The screen shots and examples in the book aren't consistent with the latest versions of Oracle Enterprise Manager/Database Control. The version I downloaded and installed for Windows just a few weeks ago was occasionally different than the images I saw in the examples. Sometimes, the differences were minor (just a slight variation on the name of a link, for instance), but other times they were a little more severe (columns that don't appear in the version I downloaded, or functionality that seems to have been moved).
2. The last chapter in Part 1 of the book covers a topic that's an objective for the OCP test, not the OCA one (at least according to the Oracle site as of this morning). Not a big deal and it's good info to know, but if you're studying specifically for the exam you might not want to spend time on info that isn't directly relevant.
3. I could live with 1 and 2 above, but this is by far the worst part... The companion CD includes practice tests for the OCA and OCP exams, one of the main reasons I bought this book. Before I cracked open the book, I took the test labeled "OCA" to get a sort of baseline read on my current preparedness. Having taken the instructor-lead course Oracle recommends for preparation, I thought I should do reasonably well.
I scored a 23%. To make matters worse, the questions themselves were baffling, at times covering subjects I hadn't even heard of. I was completely disheartened. Did I sleep through my $3000 class, or was I just that dumb (please don't answer that)?
A couple of days later, I figured it out: the software was bunk. The tests were mislabeled (that is, the one labeled "OCA" was actually the practice test for the more advanced "OCP" certification exam and vice versa).
Furthermore, many of the questions themselves have typos. I found a few, for instance, that don't actually state the question, going right from the background info to the possible answers. You'd get a "question" that looked like this:
Jill has four bananas. Mike has three apples.
A) Monkey.
B) Six.
C) Spaghetti.
D) None of the above.
Or, in at least one case, a question that told you what the actual answer was before giving you the choices:
What's 4+2?
B is the correct answer. 4+2 equals 6.
A) 3
B) 6
C) 18
D) Pi
One last beef with the included practice tests... After completing the test, you're given the option of reading a review of the questions you missed. Great feature that all practice test software should give you. While reviewing your misses, though, there's an utterly useless "References" portion that always just refers you back to the text. Doesn't tell you which page to look at for more info, or even which chapter. Just ever-so-helpfully tells you that there's more info on that question SOMEWHERE in the book. Thanks for nothing.
Clearly, more of my problems were with the companion CD than with the book itself. If I reviewed only the text on its own merits, I'd probably give it 4 stars instead of just three. Likewise, the CD would only get 2 on its own.
Again, though, it's imperative that you don't rely solely on this text for the exam (or for learning the software itself, for that matter). Download it and install it, get familiar with EM as it is now. Look on the Oracle site to find out whether or not the exam topics have changed. And, if you can afford it (or sweet talk your employer into it), take an instructor-lead class. It's a requirement for the OCP cert, anyway.
Oh, and in case you wanted to know... I took the test yesterday and did, indeed, pass.
 Good coaching. September 23, 2007
I passed OCA exam thanks to this book and with a little help of SelfTest software.
Very good writing. Authors definitely know the subject practically.
It is a good reading on Oracle RDBMS internals. And more entertaining than the Oracle Concepts Guide.
Again - their writing style is excellent, they do not over-complicate things and manage to explain complicated subjects simply and clearly.
I wish they wrote something on efficient oracle design :).
Good OCP guide May 12, 2007
This book is very good not just for clearing OCP but also reference for novice as well as experienced DBAs . The authors have covered the exam syllabus very concisely without leaving anything yet keeping the volume to a minimum .
However for the part 2 exam , one might have to read oracle manuals thoroughly especially for resource management and scheduler concepts .
The pratice test CD that comes with the book is very helpful.
A great book for certification May 12, 2007
As i saw, before buying this book, it's an excellent and complete reading for those interested in acomplish the certification. Don't forget to do all of the exercises!
Good reading
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