Oracle Database 11g DBA Handbook Book Review

Administer a Scalable, Secure Oracle Enterprise Database

This version of the Oracle Press Oracle Database DBA Handbook has been totally updated and expanded as it now covers the new functionality changes made to 11g in the book.

The book itself is divided into four main parts, which are Database Architecture, Database Management, High Availability and Networked Oracle. There is also an appendix on installation or configuration of Oracle.

The book begins by taking you through the basics of the Oracle database architecture, and explaining how Oracle works as well as how to best layout your disks ready for a new install and all about the initialisation parameters.

Monitoring space usage on the database is given its own chapter as is managing transactions with undo table spaces. There are also the classic database tuning, database security and auditing chapters.

The third part of the book is all about getting high availability out of your database, so this section includes chapters on Real Application Clusters, Backup and Recovery Options and about using RMAN (Recovery Manager).

Examples in the book include running code via command line with a lot of examples also showing how to run tasks using Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g.

As these books get updated every time there is a new version of Oracle released, it would be nice if the author added a few pages on what had been added and amended in the book to see if it is worthwhile purchasing the 11g version of the book if you already have the 10g version. As you would like to know if there has been a lot of important additions that pertain to Oracle 11g, instead of just the words 10g being replaced by the words 11g.

Some new DBA features for Oracle 11g are Oracle Total Recall and Oracle Flashback Data Archive amongst others.

Overall I can’t recommend these books highly enough, especially if you are a new DBA or new to DBAing with Oracle. If you are a seasoned DBA then you may like to know what is new in 11g, but would perhaps be better off focusing on the changes in a new features book, instead of getting this book in order to find the changes. But everything you need to know about being an Oracle DBA on Oracle 11g is in this book.