Searching for a good, basic Oracle 8i Personal Edition BOOK

I just obtained Oracle 8i Personal Edition.

Borders Books has a huge selection of Oracle Books. Some are for Oracle 9, some are clearly for specialized, advanced applications. Even among the Oracle 8i books, many assume one has Enterprise Edition. (For example, Oracle 8i For Dummies -- don't laugh -- assumes one has DBA Assistant, and much of the book is devoted to that. Personal Edition doesn't come with DBA Assistant.)

I am trying to learn Oracle from scratch -- how to administer personal databases, create databases, work with a database using SQL (and at this point I don't know SQL, just that it's out there), basics of forms and reports. And I'm trying to understand the parts of the monster octopus that Oracle appears to be. (I've worked in C++, MFC, Java, and other languages, and I've never seen such a complex mess of interacting parts. I have no idea what the underlying structure is, nor what most of the specific programs do.)

Can anyone recommend a book, meant for Oracle 8i Personal Edition, that assumes no prior knowledge, and does an effective job covering the basics from the ground up? Title, Author, and Publisher would be helpful.

Thanks,
Steve O.
writer_at_writemaster.com Received on Tue Dec 18 2001 - 06:27:48 CET