I had already begun using Oracle 10g, but had not used many of the new features before buying this book. I found this book useful in learning some of these new features, but frequently found myself flipping back and forth when contradictions appeared. Most often, there were contradictions and inaccuracies right next to each other on the same page. Even the Self-Tests had questions written wrong with respect to answers.

I found that I had to consult the Oracle documentation over and over again to figure out what was correct, and occasionally never found the right answer anyway. I almost ran out of ink correcting the mistakes in the book in the margins (Which should be made larger in future editions.)

I have bought several other better-written exam guides in the past - the Osborne 9i New features exam guide, and Sybex 8i full certification set. This 10g guide seems incredibly sloppy compared to my past experience. I am currently looking for an 11g Exam guide, and See that Sam Alapati has written that one for Osborne again. I will try to find something else if possible because I don't trust the Author or Editors of this book.

The only reason I give this book 2 stars and not 1 is that I did pass the exam. I did not feel like this book prepared me as well as it should though.

Typos, contradictions, and poorly worded questions. Reading this book has been a painful experience. There is probably a lot of good information in this guide but it's difficult to trust that any of it is correct without going to a second source to verify.

Why can't oracle press hire a few people to proofread this stuff? After reading the other reviews, I have to wonder why a bunch of people that are unfamiliar with the content can find so many errors and the publishers of the book cannot.

Not to blame the book as the reason I failed, I realized when I went to the testing room, there are alot of items that this book doesn't cover. I recommend you read some other books for your upgrade exam.

Not to blame the book as the reason I failed, I realized when I went to the testing room, there are alot of items that this book doesn't cover. I recommend you read some other books for your upgrade exam.

This is the only guide you need to pass the exam. It may not have the depth, but it covered the objectives well.

Then again, what kind of depth does one require for ASM? I've not seen it in use yet here.

This is the only guide you need to pass the exam. It may not have the depth, but it covered the objectives well.

Then again, what kind of depth does one require for ASM? I've not seen it in use yet here.

If you are planning on taking the Oracle 10g upgrade exam this is the book I used to take the test, and I passed. A few questions on the test on nowhere to be found in the book and that could be because they are new questions or something along those lines. The practice exams are ok and may be a bit easier than the questions on the exam. I looked at some other publishers for Oracle exams and I say Sybex are the ones I am most comfortable with. I purchased this book and scheduled the exam for 6 weeks out. If I would have failed I would have blamed the book :)

As a reference book you will need additional sources as this book focuses on the Oracle exam. Good luck with the exam.

If you are planning on taking the Oracle 10g upgrade exam this is the book I used to take the test, and I passed. A few questions on the test on nowhere to be found in the book and that could be because they are new questions or something along those lines. The practice exams are ok and may be a bit easier than the questions on the exam. I looked at some other publishers for Oracle exams and I say Sybex are the ones I am most comfortable with. I purchased this book and scheduled the exam for 6 weeks out. If I would have failed I would have blamed the book :)

As a reference book you will need additional sources as this book focuses on the Oracle exam. Good luck with the exam.

I just finished passing the test. I admit this guide helped me study for the test. The guide was well organized and covered the topics in enough depth. The writing was good. However, the typos, mispellings, contradictions, poorly worded questions and just plain bad sample questions and examples were annoying. The sample tests provided by the book were okay, but had typos and problems too. The end of chapter tests had several problems: some questions were poorly phrased or the answers contradicted the main text of the book.

I marginally recommend the guide, but you need another reference. I used the Oracle online documentation constantly to double-check the facts. My advice is buy the guide because it is well organized, but you need to be careful and double-check syntax and the facts.

I also found the book poorly edited, but unlike some of the previous posters, I found many questions on my exam not covered or syntactically incompatible. After the exam, I wrote down 15 or 16 questions I remembered...and only a few of them were actually in the book. I also felt that several sujbects (REGEXP comes to mind) were poorly explained, and several --UTL_MAIL only had one small paragraph in the book and guess what? My exam had a detailed question on it. I had questions on what is the default User's Tablespace out of the box (Example or User?) and I knew my laptop's 10g database had Example...but did the book discuss this? If so, I didn't see it. There was a question about sending a compressed backup across a network if there wasn't a great amount of band width, or if you have a lot of B-Files... did I miss that? Or, what ASM controlled database init parms are ignored if used. I found the chapter questions full of enough inconsistancies to confuse me...and I had to resort to internet searches to try and find out which statement was in error.

I admit that I am probably not the typical exam-taker...I am the only software person on a 9i database, and only loaded 10g on my laptop for the exam, so I didn't have a working database to play with. Furthermore, my shop isn't typical in that it is pretty much out of the box canned software. And we don't use many of the advanced features of Oracle. But I do expect the subjects needed to be covered and highlighted in the study guide. I could answer every question correctly on the 2 test exams provided by this book, and answer every chapter question correctly...as well as get 100% on the Self Test software. And I failed the exam by 3 questions. I feel like I understood most, if not all, of the concepts covered by the book. I figure I will purchase Sybex's book and re-take the exam in December or January.

I just finished passing the test. I admit this guide helped me study for the test. The guide was well organized and covered the topics in enough depth. The writing was good. However, the typos, mispellings, contradictions, poorly worded questions and just plain bad sample questions and examples were annoying. The sample tests provided by the book were okay, but had typos and problems too. The end of chapter tests had several problems: some questions were poorly phrased or the answers contradicted the main text of the book.

I marginally recommend the guide, but you need another reference. I used the Oracle online documentation constantly to double-check the facts. My advice is buy the guide because it is well organized, but you need to be careful and double-check syntax and the facts.

The book helped me in passing the exam.
The presented material covers all
required topics, is well organized
and easy to read. The tests are at the
level of the real exam. I rate it only
with four stars, since there are too
many typos and errors.

Certainly this book is badly edited, but though the countless typos are a nuisance they do not make Alapati's text incomprehensible. I have three Oracle 10g books lying on my desk and after scanning through all of them this is the one I decided to read cover to cover. Alapati's prose is sometimes loquacious, but he succeeds in thoroughly explaining all relevant 10g new features. I do not see any alternative to this book for people who are preparing for the OCP exam and I am sure that I will often turn to it as a reference.

I've learned a lesson. Never buy the first publication of the first book out for a certification. In the race to get books out before the competetion, they don't take the time to find all the errors.

Author has done a pretty good job, topics are well covered. However as indicated by some other reviewers, there are some typos and minor mistakes found in the book. But if the topics covered in this book were referred along with Oracle's documentation, I don't think anything is left untouched.

Overall, a book worth to read if the objective is to become familiar in Oracle 10g features and pass the Oracle 10g upgrade exam.

I previoulsy reviewed this book back in December 2004 (see below my previous opinion on the book). The book is good for the certification exam and has some relevant information you need to know for the exam. I was just disappointed about the amount of errors in the book. If you notice those errors you are fine.

I took my exam today (Tuesday January 25, 2005) and score 51/61. The reason I came back to update my review is to give some credit to this book. I would admit that I learnt from this book. But I did not rely on this book alone. I also used the Sybex study guide and the OOD (Oracle Online Documentation). All of three provided me a valuable assistance in studying for the exams. The practice exam questions in the Oracle Press Book and the Sybex Study guide were helpful and I did not have to buy a practice exam software.

My advice for the exam: make sure you understand clearly the following concepts: ASM, Datapump architecture, Materialized Views, Security Policy,Index with partitions, and Advisory Framework. I was heavily tested in those areas.


December 24, 2004 (review)
I agree with most of reviewers about the amount of errors in the books. Only people who read without paying attention to the contents and not following the logic will have a hard time finding those errors. I bought this book because of the author reputation since I read one of his books before. I would say that Sam Alapati is an expert in Database area, not doubt about it. But the book was written in a hasty approach with the goal to grab the market share before the competitors. I strongly believe the book is still useful. Beside the typos and some misleading errors, the book has very important information you need to know for the exam. It just gives you a lot of work to double check every thing.

I will admit that I was surprised by the first two reviews written back in November 2004. At that time I already went through about 3 chapters of the oracle press book and started seeing those mistakes in the book. I was struck by the fact that they were praising the book without mentionning those mistakes in the book.

As I always do, I don't use one source to prepare for the exam. I bought both oracle press books and sybex study guide at the same time. I have to switch to the sybex book due to those frustating mistakes you have to check all the time. So far I feel pretty comfortable with the sybex study guide. I already went through the entire sybex book and going through it for the second time.
I am planning to go back to the oracle press book too before I go take the exam. The exam questions in the oracle press are OK but not the best.

I don't know if I will recommend this book to anyone but it is just matter of choice. I don't regret buying it and I am planning to keep it around.

I give 3 stars.
Good luck!!!

I think I am the first guy who is doing proof-reading of this book. There are so many typographical errors, wrong names of the fixed tables/views/packages. For almost everything I had to go back to the Oracle Documentation to confirm the names.
The content is real good but errors are frustrating!

I am amazed at how many typos and mistakes are in this book. It makes me wonder if I just got the first draft. I have not taken the exam yet, but I have purchased another certification book from Sybex. I hope that book will contain fewer errors than this book. I don't have enough confidcnce in this book to use it as my only study guide.

I am preparing for the 10g DBA upgrade test with this book now. To my pleasant surprise, I am able to easily understand many of the new 10g features which confused me before I bought this book.
My confidence level in my 10g abilities has increased many fold after reading the chapters and taking the chapter end tests and reviewing the answers carefully.
I really love the care with which the questions were chosen - they follow the typical OCP test question style, which increases my confidence in the book.
The book is technically to the point, with concise and accurate explanations of the numerous new 10g dba features.
Congratulations and thanks to the author for putting in the effort to make so many hard technical features easily understandable.

This book is too wordy for the techical book. There are many paragraphs without end point what it is about -"we are just talking about Oracle" Simple examples are supported by many words that sometimes don't help to understand the topic.
Some topics are without clear descriptions. For example, after reading a chapter about jobs and programs I wasn't able to say what is the difference between them. There is no clear description what is a job and what is a program. Some chapter contains some historical information what doesn't really help to understand how to use new 10g features.

600 pages can be easily put into 300 pages of good tecnical book.
I cannot say that I can use this book in my daily practice - it is not easy to find quickly interested topic among so many pages of instructor's conversation about how good a new feature rather then about this feature itself.

Great coverage of all 10g DBA new features for the OCP upgrade test. The questions simulate real Oracle OCP test questions as well. The coverage is interesting and the material is substantially more than previous OCP upgrade exams (this book is twice the size of the 9i upgrade book) Heartily recommend the book to all DBAs who are planning to take the test.The book is also the best 10g new features reference for DBAs that I've seen.

I'm having fun reading this book! It is much larger than the previous test guides, with exhuastive explanation of all the new DBA 10g features.
I bought this book to prepare for the DBA 10g OCP upgrade test. I think I'll also use it as a reference for the new features.
The exam questions seem very realistic - the author took the beta exam and got certified as OCP DBA, and that's why I think the exam questions (a total of over 350 questions) seem well written. I think once I get through he book, I should pass the test without a problem!