Tuesday, April 11, 2006

My top 10 Oracle books

I was searching for some good Oracle books and thought it would be nice to share my list with you... Of course you have the normal reading stuff, like the Oracle concepts guide, installation manual and all the other docs you get with the database. Next to that you have the "white" Oracle education books to get an overview of a particular item. For ex. when I do a new OCP exam, I use these books to prepare myself.
These books are all good, but ...
I'm somebody who doesn't like to say something, without really knowing, testing and proving what I "think" I know. In my opinion (I didn't yet read them all, but this is just a matter of time), the below books use the same approach; they say something and they prove what they're saying with real test cases, so I can test it myself and see if it's still/also valid for my database.

I really like the Oracle database and I would like to do as much as possible in the database, that's why my list is limited to Oracle DB and PL/SQL books.

  1. Expert Oracle Database Architecture: 9i and 10g Programming Techniques and Solutions (by Thomas Kyte)
    Apress, ISBN: 1590595300
  2. Practical Oracle 8i: Building Efficient Databases (by Jonathan Lewis)
    Addison-Wesley Professional, ISBN: 0201715848
  3. Oracle PL/SQL for DBAs (by Arup Nanda and Steven Feuerstein)
    O'Reilly Media, ISBN: 0596005873
  4. Oracle Insights: Tales of the Oak Table (by a lot of people - Oaktable members)
    Apress, ISBN: 1590593871
  5. Cost-Based Oracle Fundamentals (by Jonathan Lewis)
    Apress, ISBN: 1590596366
  6. Effective Oracle Database 10g Security by Design (by David Knox)
    McGraw-Hill Osborne Media, ISBN: 0072231300
  7. Mastering Oracle PL/SQL: Practical Solutions (by Connor McDonald, Chaim Katz, Christopher Beck, Joel R. Kallman, David C. Knox)
    Apress, ISBN: 1590592174
  8. Oracle Data Warehouse Tuning for 10g (by Gavin JT Powell)
    Digital Press, ISBN: 1555583350
  9. Mastering Regular Expressions (by Jeffrey Friedl)
    O'Reilly Media, ISBN: 0596002890
  10. Oracle Regular Expressions Pocket Reference (by Jonathan Gennick, Peter Linsley)
    O'Reilly Media, ISBN: 0596006012
This list of books is just what I think are good books for me and for my team, in the limited area of databases and PL/SQL, next to the Oracle manuals and OTN sources.
I should put some xml/xmldb/java related books on my list, but for the moment I don't do a lot with these features and I'm satisfied with everything I find on OTN.

If you know some other good books or want to share your thoughts, you may add your comments.

3 comments:

Dimitri Gielis said...

There's a voting going on about the top 3 Oracle books, see Doug's Oracle Blog (http://oracledoug.blogspot.com/2006/05/request-what-are-your-top-three-oracle.html)

Dimitri Gielis said...

Some others good books (based on the comments on Doug's Blog):
- Optimizing Oracle Performance (by Cary Millsap, Jeffrey Holt)
- Oracle Database 10g New Features (by Robert G. Freeman)
- Oracle Wait Interface: A Practical Guide to Performance Diagnostics & Tuning (by Richmond Shee, Kirtikumar Deshpande, K. Gopalakrishnan)
- Oracle9i RMAN Backup & Recovery (by Robert G. Freeman, Matthew Hart)
- Effective Oracle by Design (by Thomas Kyte) - How could I forget this book!! I used it over and over again!

Dimitri Gielis said...

Another book about version control, I found it via the article on http://robertbaillie.blogspot.com/2006/03/uk-oug-and-running.html:
- Software Configuration Management Patterns (by Steve Berczuk and Brad Appleton).