RE: Oracle Book Mal-practice...
Date: Sat, 23 May 2009 03:51:04 +0400 (GST)
Message-ID: <21456954.9391243036393171.JavaMail.seven_at_aomfe2p1>
I have always advocated my juniors to not mug up books and try to rationalize facts. I encourage frequent technical discussions and being connected to forums like this one. I fear the silent DBA/developer who would google and run commands and then defend himself because the published source is at fault.
I recollect one incident related to RAID selection for disk storage. Different people produced different published sources that had different conclusion resulting in utter confusion. That was long time back though.
Thanks!
Amar
Www.amar-Padhi.com
-original message-
Oracle Book Mal-practice...
From: "Robert Freeman" <robertgfreeman_at_yahoo.com>
Date: 22-05-2009 05:13
So, I'm reading a particular book tonight. I don't want to say which one it is at the moment because I know one of the authors and I want to make sure that this author did not write this chapter.
My question is, what constitutes Oracle Book Writing mal-practice (and I pray I've never committed it). Certainly mistakes crop up in books all the time, I'm as guilty as any writer of this. This chapter I'm reading though, in an effort to get the reader to doing something quickly, does not lay any foundation, skips critical steps and actually prompts them to do what I consider some very dangerous things.
It would be one thing if the book said, "Look, this is not the way you should do this in production." but it does not. In this chapter, a very junior DBA might well follow the instructions and, having successfully completed everything, think that they are done. The truth, a nasty truth, is that all they have done is taken some very big risks and they have some nasty gottya's coming down the pike.
In my mind, this isn't a simple mistake. This isn't an editorial mis-step. This is someone trying to make something seem easy and leaving out some very sailient instructions without any warning.
Very bothersome.... For your Junior DBA's all I can say is buyer beware. Get yourself a good mentor to go with all these books.
Cheers all and buyer beware...
RF
Robert G. Freeman
Oracle ACE
Author:
OCP: Oracle Database 11g Administrator Certified Professional Study Guide (Sybex)
Oracle Database 11g New Features (Oracle Press)
Portable DBA: Oracle (Oracle Press)
Oracle Database 10g New Features (Oracle Press)
Oracle9i RMAN Backup and Recovery (Oracle Press)
Oracle9i New Features (Oracle Press)
Other various titles out of print now...
Blog: http://robertgfreeman.blogspot.com
The LDS Church is looking for DBA's. You do have to be a Church member in
good standing. A lot of kind people write me, concerned I may be breaking
the law by saying you have to be a Church member. It's legal I promise! :-)
http://pages.sssnet.com/messndal/church/parachurch.pdf
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Received on Fri May 22 2009 - 18:51:04 CDT