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RE: New books and new authors - and experience?

From: Freeman Robert - IL <FREEMANR_at_tusc.com>
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2004 18:49:12 -0600
Message-ID: <F5E885BEF9540D47A7BDC03CF168808706FC4A19@tuscil_ex1>


Mogens,

I appreciate your words and thoughts, and I actually agree with you to a certain degree. I can only address my book (Oracle 10g New Features) with regards to your comments of course.

First, you are quite correct that most of these 10g books are written based on the Beta version of the product. Some have even gone to press before 10g went production. I was asked by Oracle Press as to my feelings on this topic and I told them that I thought it was imperative that we wait until after 10g went production and that we had an opportunity to do some checking afterwards. To the credit of OP they agreed (though, I only got a week to check the material, and in doing so found a number of changes). The publishing industry is very competitive, cut throat even, and the looser is the last guy to publish. It's just an economic fact.

Second, with regards to my book, my approach has not been to imply any feature is worthy of use, or that it even works without bugs. I don't applaud any feature, I'm kind of like FOX News... I report, you decide.

My design is to demonstrate some of the more useful features, provide some examples, share some insights into my own investigations and we sweeten the pot with some commentary by Jonathan. I try VERY HARD not to recommend any feature, and in fact I think I say something in the book somewhere about testing testing testing these new features.

Third, it's just an honest fact that the Oracle documentation is a HUGE compendium of information.... so, I see my book as a little bit of a light thrown on a large number of topics. When you see something you really like, then one probably will need a bigger light to get at the nity and grity.... and of course test test test. It also strikes me that one has to start somewhere....

Fourth, in my opinion, the Oracle New Features documentation can be pretty weak..... So, this book augments that documentation.

As for OEM, I can't stand OEM anyway.... and while you will find a chapter in the book on OEM, it is NOT the focus of the book (much to the unhappiness of certain folks at Oracle). That was a decision on my part based on page counts, and my understanding of the interests of the DBA who would be reading the book.

So, there you go, my thoughts for what they are worth,

Robert

OH! P.S. ... I'm not trying to impress ANYONE with my work (except perhaps my NEW wife (wooo hooo) and kids :-) ).... I enjoy it (for the most part) and when I get an email from someone that says "Thanks! You helped me so much!" (which I get a lot of from the RMAN book!) that makes it all worth while. I put my email address in each book, and get lots of feedback... most of it is good.... on occation I am reminded at how much I hate to be critisized! :-)

-----Original Message-----

From: Mogens Nørgaard
To: oracle-l_at_freelists.org
Sent: 3/16/2004 5:41 PM
Subject: New books and new authors - and experience?

Friends,

I recently wrote this message, but then sent it just to myself in order not to offend anyone or perhaps be misunderstood.

But after 14 days with this message in my inbox, I have decided to go ahead and send it to the list:


It's becoming a habit to churn out books about topics that cannot possibly have been explored yet. And certainly not in any scientific manner.

How on Earth can we have books out with the word "10g" on the cover when 10g just came out, and we all know, that getting something as basic as OEM (and certainly AWR/ADDM/ASH/Advisor services) to work during the Beta phase has been damned near impossible? If that is the case, how can the books talk in detail about how fantastic these features are? Sandra's last name is...

I don't really care whether the books were "betatized" or not, or however various authors try to impress on people that their books are better than the other's. These are all books written by people without real experience in 10g (because it's bloody well impossible to HAVE real experience yet!) talking about people writing books about something they don't know enough about yet...

I fully understand Oracle's wishes here. I fully understand the publisher's wishes here. I might even understand the author's wishes here (or maybe not). But it's too much now. iAS.

I think it's time for all of us to stop buying sensationalist or un-finished or whatever books and wait until books by people who've actually done real work, in the real world, with 10g appear.

Hands down: Shouldn't we all be reading James Morle's book (titled *8i*)

or Jonathan's (titled *8i*) and LEARNING real stuff instead of just running around in real and virtual book stores, looking for new sound bites or cut/paste's from Oracle's own documentation?

Read Oracle's documentation first, try out 10g, then see if anybody with

REAL experience has written a book.

Of course they haven't. They don't exist, since the Oracle version hasn't been out yet.

Oh, I know how this happens. Been there. You're approached by a publisher who wants to publish fast and make lots of money for them and you. If you don't say NO, then you're caught between delivering SOMETHING and being blasted by the publisher. So you choose - perhaps - to generate text and examples and stuff that make it appear as if you actually WORKED with this new version of Oracle.

Of course you didn't. Ask the authors what customers or partners they worked with using 10g. Ask them if this was real production or just the usual "let's try this, let's try that" stuff. Ask. Then think. Of course they havne't been able to do anything realistic yet.

Man, when I looked at the books offered from various publishers at the RMOUG, there were a few good Oracle-related books (Dave Ensor's Design, Cary's, Lawson's, Connor's, etc.) and about 90% of the displayed books being ... well... not worth the money.

Mogens



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Received on Tue Mar 16 2004 - 18:46:27 CST

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