Oracle questions

Post #112,256 by ChrisR 7/31/03 1:22:42 PM Reply	Oracle questions We are in the process of going Oracle in a big way, so I figure I better get chopping and get my head wrapped around it. It's been some 8 to 10 years since I did anything of substance with Oracle, and what I remember is pretty fuzzy. First question is: What are the best books on Oracle? - with emphasis being mostly from the application development angle. I went to the half-priced bookstore over the weekend and managed to snag a couple of O'Reilly titles real cheap: [link\|http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/orsqplus/\|Oracle SQLPlus] and [link\|http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/oraclep2/\|Oracle PL/SQL Programming, 2nd Edition]. Both of them are a version behind (8i), though Ora don't have a new edition yet for SQLPlus. Second question is: in learning Oracle, do I really need to pay top dollar for that 9i edition, or will the much more reasonably priced 8i books do the trick? The two books I bought were $6 each. Much nicer than the $40 to $50 one must pay for the 9i insignia. But then if 9i is really significantly different, am i wasting my money buying 8i books? Finally, I'm about 2/3rds of the way through the SQLPlus book and have downloaded the Personal edition of Oracle 9i off the internet. Although SQLPlus seems easy enuf to master, it definitely feels cheezy in lots of different ways (I dislike having yet another programming language stacked on top of a programming language). Last question then concerns what the best multiplatform solution is for a simple interface to conduct queries and compile stored procedures?
Post #112,272 by admin 7/31/03 3:19:17 PM Reply	Re: Oracle questions First question is: What are the best books on Oracle? - with emphasis being mostly from the application development angle. I went to the half-priced bookstore over the weekend and managed to snag a couple of O'Reilly titles real cheap: [link\|http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/orsqplus/\|Oracle SQLPlus] and [link\|http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/oraclep2/\|Oracle PL/SQL Programming, 2nd Edition]. Both of them are a version behind (8i), though Ora don't have a new edition yet for SQLPlus. "Oracle PL/SQL Best Practices", from the same author as "Oracle PL/SQL Programming". Second question is: in learning Oracle, do I really need to pay top dollar for that 9i edition, or will the much more reasonably priced 8i books do the trick? The two books I bought were $6 each. Much nicer than the $40 to $50 one must pay for the 9i insignia. But then if 9i is really significantly different, am i wasting my money buying 8i books? 9i doesn't seem terribly different to me. There are some additions to the object stuff (inheritance, mainly). Finally, I'm about 2/3rds of the way through the SQLPlus book and have downloaded the Personal edition of Oracle 9i off the internet. Although SQLPlus seems easy enuf to master, it definitely feels cheezy in lots of different ways (I dislike having yet another programming language stacked on top of a programming language). Last question then concerns what the best multiplatform solution is for a simple interface to conduct queries and compile stored procedures? [link\|http://www.globecom.se/tora/\|TOra]. HTH. Regards, -scott anderson "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
Post #112,298 by SpiceWare 7/31/03 5:27:01 PM Reply	Tora looks pretty slick Went to try it, but we're still on a 7.x release and Tora doesn't support it :-( Darrell Spice, Jr. [link\|http://www.spiceware.org/cgi-bin/spa.pl?album=./Artistic%20Overpass\|Artistic Overpass]\n[link\|http://www.spiceware.org/\|SpiceWare] - We don't do Windows, it's too much of a chore
Post #113,007 by ChrisR 8/7/03 12:20:18 AM Reply	Gracious "Oracle PL/SQL Best Practices", from the same author as "Oracle PL/SQL Programming". Purchased it earlier today. Fortunately, this is one of the more reasonably priced O'Reilly books. Hard to swallow those $40, $50, and $60 titles. This one at $20 is more to my liking. 9i doesn't seem terribly different to me. There are some additions to the object stuff (inheritance, mainly). Great. Means the older books should be useful (and cheap). Just because it was easy, here's the [link\|http://www.angelfire.com/tx4/cus/shapes/plsql.html\|PL/SQL shapes]. Probably won't be using inheritance and OO soon in PL/SQL, but I did notice several quirks. First, you have to drop all the subtypes manually before you can recompile a base type. Second, the constructor mechanism seems kind of flimsy - relying on declaration order within the types. Third, SELF is optional for accessing member properties and functions but is required for access to the same in the superclass. TOra. Looks good. Downloaded but haven't had time to do much exploring.
Post #113,054 by admin 8/7/03 11:26:44 AM Reply	OO in Oracle is a pain in 9, a nightmare in 8 The constructors in 8 are required. So if you have an object with say 40 fields, you have a constructor with 40 parameters. We use a perl script to generate the object code from the table schema. :-) I didn't know that about dropping the subtypes. Nasty. Fortunately we have a SQL loader program that does all that stuff for us. Regards, -scott anderson "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
Post #112,466 by Meerkat 8/1/03 8:54:55 PM 8/1/03 9:13:31 PM Reply	I'm in a similar boat re: going to Oracle I'd been away from Oracle for about three years, but am now back into it (and very happy as a result). I've found my "Oracle 8i the complete reference" to still be invaluable - when it doubt it usually just takes a few seconds Googling to found out if info provided by the 8i book is still relevant for 9i. And since the project in which I'm involved doesn't contain much rocket science, the 8i information is pretty much always spot-on. I still haven't tried the TOra tool yet, but we get by on a mixture of Oracle Enterprise Manager and TOAD. Edit: Subject line. John. Busy lad. Edited by Meerkat Aug. 1, 2003, 09:13:31 PM EDT Expand All History
Post #112,474 by admin 8/1/03 10:18:01 PM Reply	Lots of TOADs here too And probably some JDeveloper at some point. It has a passable database browser/editor built in. Regards, -scott anderson "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
Post #112,529 by broomberg 8/2/03 7:11:57 PM Reply	Application perspective? What types of apps? What language? How big is the data? What response times required?
Post #112,535 by ChrisR 8/2/03 10:53:37 PM Reply	HR & Finance Applications Lot's of one-off stuff. Some is thrown away in an instant. Some sticks around for extended periods of time. In the current context, I'm interested in PL/SQL as well as SQL in general. Of course, performance is part of the equation. And some dba stuff inevitably bleeds over to the app side.

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