Re: How long for me to take Oracle from 0 to 60?

From: Malcolm Dew-Jones <yf110_at_vtn1.victoria.tc.ca>
Date: 29 Dec 99 22:39:47 GMT
Message-ID: <386a8db3.0@news.victoria.tc.ca>

Bill Littman (blittman_at_nospam_tomotherapy.com) wrote:
: Hi-

: There is a good chance that I will be changing my duties to become an Oracle
: developer and administrator. I have installed 8i Enterprise Edition, Release
: 8.1.5 and I am not sure where to proceed from here.

I use a book
 "Oracle 7, the complete reference, by George Koch, published by Osborne"

I do not know if there's a newer version of it, with any v8 stuff, but even if there isn't an update I would recommend it. The basic SQL stuff doesn't change, and its an Oracle specific book, one of the better ones in my opinion. Just ignore the stuff about writing reports, since the report builder is what you will want to use for that.

Figure out the minimal tables you need, and generate the minimal queries and views you need by hand.

I would recommend being very leery of the various tools until you feel comfortable with the underlying database work. Use the fancy tools just for the absolute minimum number of forms to get the data in, and reports to get the data out. Often, a simply SELECT, GROUP BY, ORDER BY spooled into a file provides an adequate report until you get more familiar with the tools.

As for the admin end of the database - just make sure you have lots of disk space and do lots of backups. Any changes you make, table layouts or anything else, should be written in scripts, and then run the scripts to do the work. From the SQl prompt, make sure the SQLplus program is in a sensible directory where you keep your files. (Use the file:spool option in windows to open a spool file in your work directory. This now becomes your current directory.) Now you can simply type @YOUR_FILE.SQL to run the scripts you write.

Put all your SQL into a few standard files (keep them in the "sensible" directory I mentioned above, and they can all be run very easily from the SQLplus command line as required.)
 e.g.

	TABLES.SQL	- holds all create tables statements
	INDEXES.SQL	- all indexes you find you need
	VIEWS.SQL	- all CREATE OR REPLACE VIEWS
	REPORT_QUERY1.SQL	- sample SELECT that provides the basis of
				a report
	...etc...

Learn the commands
	SELECT * FROM USER_TABLES ORDER BY TABLE_NAME;
	SELECT TABLE_NAME FROM USER_TABLES ORDER BY TABLE_NAME;

similar commands are useful for INDEX_NAME in USER_INDEXES, VIEW_NAME in USER_VIEWS, other important tables are ALL_TABLES, ALL_INDEXES, ALL_VIEWS (plus more, but these are the first).

 my $02. Received on Wed Dec 29 1999 - 16:39:47 CST