Re: Ramming two SQL queries together.....

From: Charles Hooper <hooperc2000_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Sat, 29 May 2010 16:06:36 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <2f5e663d-6d73-49c1-b310-58b97f4cae6b_at_f13g2000vbm.googlegroups.com>



On May 29, 5:28 pm, John Hurley <hurleyjo..._at_yahoo.com> wrote:
> Charles:
>
> > Incidentally, I have a copy of Tom Kyte's new book on pre-order and a
> > copy of "Oracle Tuning: The Definitive Reference Second Edition" on
> > pre-order (the first of that author's books I have ordered - I was
> > curious after bumping into the author several times on the OTN
> > forums).  I will probably post detailed reviews of both books.  I hope
> > that the second edition of the second book does not show me a "Top 5
> > Timed Events" report with a value indicating the number of waits for
> > the CPU, or other odd problems like average single block read times of
> > 2.75 seconds, while the average multi-block read time is 0.127 seconds
> > like can be observed in a Google Books view of page 16 of the first
> > edition.  Last year I mentioned to the author of this book some of my
> > concerns (on the OTN forums) about several pages of the first edition,
> > viewable through Google books, and I am curious to see if corrections
> > were made for the second edition.
>
> You are not bringing in the name of the leader of the guide ponys are
> you?  Not the New York subway bleeder?
>
> Not sure why you are going in this direction here buddy ... it could
> get ugly.

I was curious, so I spent good money on the book. For most of the Oracle books that I have read in the last two years I have posted detailed reviews of the books on Amazon. The reviews list what I thought was good about the book, what I thought was great about the book, errors/errata found in the book's chapters, as well as misc. points about the book as it is read. Some of my reviews identified a dozen or more errors in a book, which is a significant problem with some of the Oracle books on the market. The error must make it difficult for beginners to learn about Oracle Database.

How long will the review of the "Oracle Tuning: The Definitive Reference Second Edition" book stretch? I am not sure, but it appears that I could write about a 4 page review on the first 27 pages of the first edition of this book - I sincerely hope that some/most of those issues were addressed in the second edition. I want to make certain that I obtain a good value from the $44 that I spent on the book. I do not think that it too much to ask for accuracy from a published book, especially when the book cost more than $40.

Some of the pages in the chapters that I co-authored in the "Expert Oracle Practices" required more than 8 hours of research, typing, verification, testing, proofing, re-testing, and formatting per page. I believe that Raldolf spent roughly the same amount of time on the pages that he wrote for the chapters. I suspect that many of the very good books that are on the market for Oracle also required about the same amount of time per page. Certainly, it can't be too much to ask that other book authors put effort into testing and verification of what they publish?

The author's website states about the the "Oracle Tuning: The Definitive Reference Second Edition" book: "This is not a book for beginners. Targeted at the senior Oracle DBA, this comprehensive book gives you all of the knowledge you need to be successful in tuning even the most complex Oracle database." So, I will be looking for the portions of the book's contents that are comprehensive and targeted at the senior Oracle DBA.

Charles Hooper
Co-author of "Expert Oracle Practices: Oracle Database Administration from the Oak Table"
http://hoopercharles.wordpress.com/
IT Manager/Oracle DBA
K&M Machine-Fabricating, Inc. Received on Sat May 29 2010 - 18:06:36 CDT

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