The book is excellent! I have covered so much material that I didn't know much about a few weeks ago, and now I feel that my general knowledge of Oracle has increased many fold. Things like memory management, diversity of database tables and index types are all areas covered in the past chapters, and I believe that I now understand the basics of these topics.
And even though many may not believe me, I actually find the writing to be great also. It doesn't feel like a "heavy duty" technical book. Little comments like "That's a pretty deep thought there: the database already knows the answer to any question you might ask it, before you ask it." (found in chapter 7) makes it enjoyable to me.
I'm on the "home stretch" now. I've just finished chapter 11 and hope to complete the book by the end of the week. I've marked out a few things that I'd like to discuss with my mentor, but overall I believe I'm doing OK. There was a little "brain glitch" when reading about nested tables. I mean what was that all about?!?! I understand that you can connect a parent/child relationship between 2 tables, but failed to see why this was better/more efficient to the p_key/f_key method. This is one of the areas that I must rely on Thyge or another colleague to enlighten me.
PS. Even though the book caries a title with "Expert" in it, I don't suppose that I will become an expert from just reading it (unfortunately).
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I thought I would leave a note, to let you know that there is at least one person out in the ether, interested in your progress.
When I first started to get interested in Oracle and decided to take it seriously, it took some time to work out which were the valuable resources and which were the dross. You will be glad to know that the book list you will cover are, in my view, the best starting points to learn about the database. My opinion is based upon reading them all, and in some cases re-reading. By being given this book list, and getting to work with the guys at Miracle, you have a great head start.
In an earlier post you implied that some of what you are reading is going over your head (latching and locking). All I can suggest is that you go back and re-visit these areas later in your learning process - it will all become clear!!
After over 10 years, I am still re-reading key books that I have found helpful over the years. I seem to pick up a new insight into a recent experience each time I do this.
I wish you all the best with the learning. I'm sure you will find that Oracle forms the core of an interesting and rewarding career.
Mathew Butler
On the point of nested tables, In my view these are best avoided. I used them for storing meter data as it seemed nicer to have a single record that would contain a days results (hourly data). However, it can make your sql needlessly tortuous. I ran into a post on AskTom a few months later and he seemed to suggest that there was no real benefit to using them.
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