Oracle Database 10g Express Edition for Windows Book Review

Your Complete Oracle Database XE Starter Kit

Oracle has released a free to use database program called Oracle Express Edition. It is available for Windows and Linux. This book from Oracle Press covers everything to do with Oracle Express on the Windows platform.

‘Oracle Database 10g Express Edition for Windows’ covers how to install the database step by step and how to set up the database, administer, tune, troubleshoot and secure the database.

‘Oracle Database 10g Express Edition for Windows’ is split into three sections, Getting Started, Fundamentals of Application Development and Database Administration.

The Getting Started section is quite small and just explains how to install and set up the database. The Fundamentals of Application Development section takes you through using your XE database and there is a good walkthrough of how to create a complete application in the XE environment. The final section Database Administration shows you how to secure your database, manage the database space, protect the database and how to tune up your system.

The book also teaches you about basic PL/SQL and how to build relational database schemas. With this new version of Oracle, all work is carried out in a web browser, this includes administration, creating simple forms, and using SQL*Plus.

There are some things to note about the XE Edition of Oracle and that is that you cannot have more than one database instance on the same machine, although you can put XE on a machine that has other licensed copies of Oracle on it. Oracle XE can only allows 4GB of user data in the database and the database will only use a maximum of 1GB RAM even though you may have more to hand.

I tried installing the software on a laptop with 1GB Ram and a 1.4 Celeron M processor, the RAM was ample but the processor was constantly running at 100%, so I had to uninstall it. This means that the footprint of Oracle Express Edition is not that small and so a reasonably powerful machine is still required to get the XE edition to run.

If you are familiar with Oracle databases then you will want to miss out on some sections of the book including the basics of PL/SQL and how to build a basic relational schema. The main section you will be interested in is how to create a whole application using XE and the database administration sections.

‘Oracle Database 10g Express Edition for Windows’ is a good book and one that provides you everything you need to know about Oracle Express Edition on Windows, it even includes the software you need on a CD. If you are using Linux then look for the other version of the book which just covers Oracle Express Edition for Linux.