I think that this book is excellent. Backup and recovery can be hard to understand at times, especially for those who are new to it. It is a great book that is all hands on, and that's the way you learn B/R, not just by reading. If you have a little bit of knowledge of B/R then this book will really help you a lot. I know people complained about the typos, but that is not that big of an issue, plus they already have an errata out for it. The only downside I guess is that everything is done using Oracle 8i and some commands are different. But if you combine this book with the Oracle9i Backup and Recovery documentation then you're all set! I think it explains things very well and makes you do things so you can see what exactly is going on. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who has a little knowledge of Oracle B/R but would like to put that knowledge into practice. I want to give it 4.5 stars because of the minor typos and using 8i, but can't :) BUY THE BOOK!
Good Luck!!

I thought this book was great! I really enjoyed the material and the analogies. I really get Oracle backup & recovery now. Forget about the typo's -- the material is what counts.

This book has almost one error per page which is much too high for a technical book. It is unfortunate that the authors did not put in the effort to proof read the book and to check their solutions. It is interesting to note that the solutions on the web site are not consistent with the exercises in the book.

I wonder how the authors authors keep their real jobs if their attention to detail is the same as demonstrated in this book.

Oracle backup and recovery can be very complex. The standard Oracle documentation is hard to follow and missing examples and scenarios. I've read this book cover to cover, and the authors have done an excellent job at capturing the information you need to know to backup and recover your Oracle database. The Linux discussions are applicable to any Unix platform as well. This book is a great reference to have before disaster strikes.

I would rate this book 5 stars for the material. But, gosh, is there any Oracle book without mistakes? When would authors and publishes care enough to eliminate them, or at least minimise them? Even errata contains only about 50% of necessary corrections - after 6 months from being published.
What is the value of instructions if you can't follow them?
If you know how to correct them by yourself, then you can buy this book, otherwise it would be another pain.

To my advice,the book best addresses false oracle beginners, it is conceived like a self-training manual. This progressive step to step manual guides the user from the simplest backups to the more sophisticated ones. The examples are all online and concern Oracle 8i and 9i; they are run on linux and NT/2000.
I have gone through the 2/3 of the book and the associated exercices (2000) and little information was lacking so i needed outside help. It will greatly help oracle administrators who can get confidence outside the production databases and all backup consultants who promote vendor software.
Although some minor errors, i give a 5 stars rate.

For the beginner to Oracle, this book is exceptional!!! I was blown away. It starts off with an interesting analogy to what a DBMS is/does and then in Chapter 3 (called Hand-on Practice) he has you downloading Oracle (Windows or Linux) and installing it and creating databases that you later backup and recover. I was very impressed. It is so essential to get your hands on any software to fully learn it. So, even though this book is focused on backup/restore, the first half of it is teaching you Oracle from the ground up. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is not afraid of installing a huge software package and has an interest in Oracle.

Good book to get a grasp on backup and recovery process for Oracle. Explains many unexplained subjects. Excellent practices to verify the reading material. There are few mistakes in the sql and scripts that needed to be rectidy in the future releases. Asif Jafri OCP DBA