RE: OEM or lots of code?

>> look for a mix with an attempt to think
I think this is the direction we are going with this book. Arup Nanda who did a lot of 10g NF coverage for Oracle.com is doing a lot of commentary in the book (much like Jonathan Lewis did in the 10NF book which I think was priceless - Thanks JL). The added commentary I've seen thus far is such added value. Also I'm trying to add value by adding some of my personal experiences with things. Like I've said before though, page count is always limited and that is *so* frustrating and often requires that you cut stuff you wish you didn't have to.

For everyone who has left comments about OEM vs. PL/SQL, the theme seems to be the same as that noted in the post below from Niall, do both and augment with some additional information and experience. I'll do what I can. Keep in mind that this is a brand new release, and this is an early adopter kind of book. So it's difficult to give a lot of real "production" experience in it (For example something like this takes ten hours to run if you have a database > 1TB), though I am running in several different environments, in fact I'm using more environments for this book than I have for either of the previous new features books. I can tell you that the entire book will be checked against the production code before it goes to print.

Finally, I have had questions in the past about why I stopped blogging at my blog site http://robertgfreeman.blogspot.com/. There were a number of reasons for this, but I've decided to start up again, so I've added a new entry. I'll be adding Oracle related stuff in the near future so I hope you will check out the site once in a while.

Thanks for all your feedback. It is my desire to give the Oracle community a book that will do everyone some good.
Robert G. Freeman
Oracle Consultant/DBA/Author
Principal Engineer/Team Manager
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Father of Five, Husband of One,
Author of various geeky computer titles
from Osborne/McGraw Hill (Oracle Press)
Oracle Database 11g New Features Now Available for Pre-sales on Amazon.com! Sig V1.1

  -----Original Message-----
  From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org
[mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org]On Behalf Of Niall Litchfield   Sent: Sunday, July 08, 2007 1:19 PM
  To: robertgfreeman_at_yahoo.com
  Cc: oracle-l
  Subject: Re: OEM or lots of code?

  Hi Robert

  I like seeing both. What I really don't like is a book (or course or presentation) that is full of how to do x in OEM, now how to do X in pl/sql; how to do Y in OEM now how to do Y in PL/SQL it looks like a lazy author regurgitating docs. So I guess in a wish list that likely doesn't fit with publishing deadlines I'd look for a mix with an attempt to think, which interface makes more sense for most of my audience for this task. So for example when dealing with RMAN I wouldn't dream of covering the EM interface, when using ASH I'd be drilling down through the EM graphs, in both cases because I think those routes make the most sense for most people.

  cheers and good luck

  Niall

  On 7/7/07, Robert Freeman <robertgfreeman_at_yahoo.com> wrote:     Folks... I'm writing the 11g New Features book right now (It's up on Amazon

    for pre-sales, so I'm told I can mention the book, but I can't talk about

    11g, so please don't ask). As I'm writing I find that I'm in a bit of a     quandary, so I thought I'd ask you what your preference is.

    If you have used some of the Advisor features in 10g, for example, you know

    that there are pretty easy to use OEM interfaces into the advisors, and     there is the rather long, involved use of various supplied packages     available that allow you to run the advisors.

    In this new book, I'm considering biasing my coverage to OEM for a few     reasons:

1. OEM is less complex to use.
2. Adding coverage for both will take up many more pages. When you are writing a book you are limited to a page count range, so depth is limited based on this too.
3. The Code route, in and of itself, can be complex. I'm not sure if it's worth the extra time to add the code in some cases just because of this complexity.

    I'm wondering if anyone who has used these features or suspect they will use

    them in the future has a preference. In some cases, if page count allows,

    I'll do both. In some cases I need to select either/or due to page count     considerations. In the past, I've been very heavily code oriented and really

    relegated OEM to the background, but now I'm thinking of moving in the other

    direction.

    Thoughts??

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