As a newbie to Oracle Job Scheduling, I found the book a bit hard to follow. For example, the author writes about scheduling jobs using Cron and crontab in Unix/Linux and Windows schedulers but he just does not show you how. He describes the schedulers and that's it. Why not include few examples using Oracle data????. After all, it is all about Oracle, isn't it Doc?.

The same with the rest of the book. The reader is likely to feel lost because the author does not guide him or her step by step. He hits you with a long program without explaining the bits and pieces, slowly, smoothly and nicely. He seems to be in a rush (pizza burning in the Oven? :-)

Well, could be that Dr. Hall is writing for another DR.?. In other words, the author seems to write for someone who already knows - someone who could decode all those parts of the programs with no problems?. If that is the case, then why write the book at all?. The other DR. already knows :-)

If writing for people new to job scheduling, the author should reconsider the way he presents the information. Perhaps do some teaching first? - teachers seem to assume that students know as much as teachers do. Before explaining Boolean logic, should one not explain what Boolean is first?. (Well, I am making this stuff up, to appear as an expert in computers :-).

Finally, I find the link between chapters rather poor. There were times when I could not tell how one chapter links to others or why that chapter is important to start with.

So, I agree with the negative reviews to some extent but give the book 4 stars because Dr. Hall is definitely an expert, he is just a bit too shy to write in a simple and more entertaining style. (Or is it that I gave it 4 starts because I already have the book and want to convince myself that I did good buying it? :-)).

Anyways, take it easy on us, the beginners, Doc., will ya?.

In answer to some previous reviews, the book was written against 8i, 9i and 10gR1. The book was finished and with the publishers before the release of 10g Release 2, so it doesn't contain event based scheduling.



The scheduler updates in 10gR2 are explained on my website.



Cheers



Tim...

PS. I rated this post to match the current average rating, so as not to affect the overall rating of this product :)

In answer to some previous reviews, the book was written against 8i, 9i and 10gR1. The book was finished and with the publishers before the release of 10g Release 2, so it doesn't contain event based scheduling.

The scheduler updates in 10gR2 are explained on my website.

Cheers

Tim...
PS. I rated this post to match the current average rating, so as not to affect the overall rating of this product :)

I bought this book after browsing the DBMS_SCHEDULER sections of the 10.2 manuals. I didn't find anything that wasn't already better explained in the manuals. A lot of DBMS_SCHEDULER functionality was missing (e.g. creating job chains).

I bought this book after browsing the DBMS_SCHEDULER sections of the 10.2 manuals. I didn't find anything that wasn't already better explained in the manuals. A lot of DBMS_SCHEDULER functionality was missing (e.g. creating job chains).

This book has pretty good examples of using the scheduler package. It dealt with the time-based scheduling very well. However, Oracle 10gR2 has event-based scheduling also which is a very powerful feature and which is what more people will be interested in. Hopefully, there will be a new revision to this book pretty soon incorporating event-based scheduling.

Tim Hall is the brains behind http://www.oracle-base.com and has produced more tips and explanations over the years than most in the Oracle community.

This book is his first and covers the small but really rather crucial area of scheduling systems administration tasks using the Oracle schedulers.

The book does a good job of covering the capabilities of the scheduler and does come with some ready worked scripts. The combination of the two of these should ensure that by the time you have worked through the examples you are able to schedule your own tasks reliably and effectively.

I was somewhat distracted by the cartoons that introduce each chapter and by the repeated printing of the same legal disclaimer at the top of each example script. In places two the writing style was clear but rather ponderous - reading more like a manual than an addition to the manual set.

Overall then the book does what it sets out to do, but in places both the writing and , presumably, house style detracted from the content.

Managing jobs in Oracle 9i and below was a pretty straight forward process; start the job queue processes and submit a PL/SQL Block using dbms_job. If you wanted any level of detail you had to wrap the dbms_job functionality around a package and some other tables. Job scheduling was basic and it generally worked. Any complicated scheduling or interaction with the OS and you were out of luck and had to revert to cron.

I'm not sure what I expected when I started reading Oracle Job Scheduling, by Dr. Tim Hall, a few days ago. I've got a decent handle on dbms_job and have used it extensively for all sorts of maintenance tasks. How different could job scheduling in 10g be? Believe me, it's different.

Dr. Hall explains how the new dbms_scheduler packages works and the details of each call. In addition he explains in detail how the new INTERVAL type works and gives very through examples. Chapter 4 is by far the most valuable chapter as it explain four different methods to schedule dependant jobs. The examples in this chapter are an extension of Tims experience in the real-world implementing solutions. Later on, the book explains about how to monitor the new scheduler and how to view the job logs.

I've got to admit I breezed over the sections on OEM and OS Scheduling. I don't use OEM and there's nothing I really need to know about cron.

This book was a good read. Don't get me wrong, it's no A Dog Year: Twelve Months, Four Dogs and Me. It's a technical book through and through. I would definitely recommend it if you are planning on using the Oracle job scheduler to implement complex business schedules.

Oh, and by about the third time I saw:
-- ****************************************************
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--
-- To license this script for a commercial purpose,
(...)-- ****************************************************

I was ready to barf.

I wouldn't particularly recommend this book to anyone.

I myself did learn new things from it: the use of -1 in calendaring expressions was a genuine novelty for me, for example. And I have a margin note on page 158 which reads, in its entirety, "It seems to me that this section is the first and only one in which Tim has come up with something new and insightful, that is more than mere 'getting syntax correct' reference stuff, and more than just re-wording the Oracle documentation". The section referred to is the one where a dependent chain of jobs is created, and how one might go about making sure that job 2 in the chain doesn't get run unless job 1 succeeds first. That was a really good section, the insight was real and tangible, and it was above all an enjoyable read.

But that's the real shame here: Tim Hall is a very capable Oracle technician, and he could have written a work full of genuine enlightenment. Even bad writing style can't get entirely in the way of a good story enthusiastically told, so his irritating use of the passive voice, over-complex terminology & jargon and unrealistic examples needn't necessarily have spelt doom for this work. But unfortunately, job scheduling by its very nature isn't a particularly gripping story (and I really think 300 pages on job scheduling is just too much!), and the writing is pedestrian and dull, not lively and enthusiastic. So the technical insight is lost in a sea of ho-hum.

I really wanted to like this book, in short. And it pains me somewhat that I can't and don't. Tim has it in him to do much better than this, though, I am sure. So: fingers crossed for the next one.