Re: Oracle Forms book recommendations please ??
Date: 6 Oct 1994 21:45:00 GMT
Message-ID: <steve#m#_dave-061094144218_at_17.25.26.138>
In article <35rm3q$17l_at_stc06.CTD.ORNL.GOV>, ncg_at_ornl.gov (Nancy) wrote:
>
> A couple of weeks ago someone posted a recommendation for a book on
> Oracle Forms. I've misplaced the name of the book. Does anyone
> remember the name of that book or have others they can recommend ?
>
> Thanks,
> Nancy
> (ncg_at_ornl.gov)
>
> Martin Marietta Energy Systems
> Oak Ridge, TN
Nancy,
Here is a book review someone sent me when I asked a similar question:
Steve Hoffman Consulting at Apple Computer
Here are some excerpts from the book review of the forthcoming Spring issue of
Oracle Magazine.
Book Review for Oracle Forms developers Companion by Thomas B. Cox, Senior Consultant and member of the IOCA
Having read ORACLE: Forms Developer's Companion I can see litle reason
to bother writing a review. The back cover and inside front pages
contain enough quotes to make up an entire review, from Dale Lowery
["A must-have"] to Matt Reagan ["provides the seeds for a hundred
SQL*Forms applications"] to Timo Siniranta ["excellent examples"].
Timo Siniranta, by the way, is an Oracle product line manager for Finland
and
one of the savvier Forms programmers out there, as well as the author
of an SQL*ReportWriter report that pulls documentation for your forms
out of the SQL*Forms repository. Simply put, if you program in
SQL*Forms Version3, you need this book. Go buy it.
Not yet convinced? Consider this. The authors are Andrew Yang, Brian
Adams,
and Steve Muench -- all Oracle employees with extensive Forms experience.
Steve is the Forms product manager and has worked for Oracle for over three
years, and Andrew and Brian are veterans of Oracle's Worldwide Support Tools Group.
A technical book such as this one must possess certain features. Its prose must be well written and easy to understand; it must not shy away from complex problems; it must define a scope both large enough to be useful and small enough to treat thoroughly. Oracle Forms Developer's
Companion succeeds at all of these, and more. I kept it constantly by my
side
during the implementation phase of a CASE*Generator project, and found it
to
be the single most useful book at my disposal.
The authors, clearly real world users of the product and interested in
lightening their own tech support burden, have taken every opportunity to
encourage the reader to write code that is easily maintained, using
specific
examples of "making generic" those routines that look hopelessly
customized.
There are many large chunks of clearly written, well commented code,
including
examples ranging from "generic routines for coloring fields" to
"simulating
arrays and stacks" to "creating a generic auditing mechanism". One valid
complaint might be that a book with this much source code should come with
a
diskette copy of the source.
The text is 600-plus pages, including five appendices and an exhaustive 28-page index, and is quite well bound -- a necessity in a book that you'll
prop open next to your work for hours at a stretch.
Particular praise should be given to the publisher. There are far too many
books released with the tagline "getting the most out of <product X>", and
the
vast majority are neither more comprehensive nor more useful than the
original
product documentation. Many product vendors have helped blaze this
shameful
trail of supplementing inadequate product documentation with after-market,
high-cost, low-value pulp.
Oracle Forms Developer's Companion will continue to pay benefits well into
the
life of Oracle Forms 4.0, and one can only hope that other books of this
nature and caliber will be forthcoming.
For further information contact:
Maverick Publications
PO Box 635
Belmont CA 94002-0635
(415) 345 9144
$44.50 + $4.50 s/h
Intl: $44.50 + $20 s/h
Received on Thu Oct 06 1994 - 22:45:00 CET