These authors have taken two somewhat diverse topics and combined them into an easy-to-read and cohesive book.

The examples are especially helpful and the authors take great care to explain the issues in Plain English.

Overall, a highly recommended book.

These authors have taken two somewhat diverse topics and combined them into an easy-to-read and cohesive book.

The examples are especially helpful and the authors take great care to explain the issues in Plain English.

Overall, a highly recommended book.

This is NOT a book for learning Perl if you're a DBA. The whole book is devoted to describe a lot of free DBA utilities written in this language, and it doesn't give you any roboust help to build your own Oracle-Perl scripts. There's a very little (about 40 pages) APPENDIX devoted to look at the language grammar and programming issues. The only chapter that deserve the only star I give for this book is CHP7 - OCI Calls with Oracle::OCI. But, is this a book written for DBA's or developers?
If someone publish a book saying "UNIX Korn shell scripts for Oracle DBA's", what do I expect? Simply! learn about UNIX Korn shell and how to write DBA scripts for my Oracle system. But if the book talks about utilities written for Oracle in Korn shell scripts, then, clearly it fails its purpose.
Maybe those tools described can be useful for DBA tasks, specially because they're free... the bottom line is that this book doesn't teach you how to programm in Perl. Get something else, devoted just to Perl programming, like "Perl 6 Essentials" from Allison Randal.

"Perl for Oracle DBAs" is indeed a real pearl. This 600-plus paged volume was designed to be a reliable friend of any administrator, whose responsibilities include the oiling of Oracle database machinery.
The book, which comes with a toolkit package that contains more than a hundred ready-to-use programs, bared all the mysteries that surround Oracle/Perl software: including Oracle Call Interface (OCI), Perl DataBase Interface (DBI), as well as all the other modules that commune with both software.
This book runs as smoothly as any pearl could run.

I've always loved perl and wrote a lot of utilities to monitor and manage databases when I worked as a full time DBA (using oraperl & perl4). However, over the years as my focus shifted to wider software architecture I found it difficult to keep up with new releases, modules and so forth. From time to time I would visit CPAN but the sheer volume of modules and the limited time I had was preventing me from taking full advantage of modern perl.

Jared and Andy's book neatly solved this problem. Within an hour of opening their book I had fully upgraded my perl and added heaps of fantastic utilities that I never even knew existed. Sometimes perl can be hard to install and configure but this book makes it a breeze.

This book is indispensable if you are trying to get started with perl - and every DBA should! If you are already a perl user I'm sure you'll learn about new features or find utilities that will repay the cost of the book many times over.

The book is clear, concise and to the point. Style is excellent as I would expect from Andy and Jared. The book covers rare and hard to find topics like installing mod_perl and installing OWA toolkit. The PDBA collection of scripts is very comprehensive and enormously useful. This is certainly a must-have for any Oracle DBA. Great book!

Over time, as we develop systems, cut code, administer data bases and perform myriad other tasks, we tend to build up a 'kit bag' of useful tricks, code snippets and techniques.
This book makes a welcome contribution with its numerous code examples and clear explanations.

Although, as the title suggests, this is aimed primarily at Oracle administrators, there is much here for those with more than a passing interest in the rich text-processing language that is Perl.

With library modules also available for Sysbase and MySQL, for example, connections across disparate databases are a simple matter of appropriate API calls.

Indeed, in the excellent appendices, there is a code example showing simultaneous connections to both an Oracle and a MySQL database and how to extract and process data between them
using Perl code and embedded SQL. The ability to do this easily and efficiently without resorting to dump and re-loads using ASCII flat files was a small revelation.

With their clear real-world approach, incisive and, often witty, explanations and observations, the enthusiasm of the authors for their subject is clear.

This book is not only a boon to data base administrators but should also prove to be very useful to those who simply want to learn more about the power of Perl.

Perl is the ideal language for Oracle DBAs. Those who are already aware of its strengths will have implemented it to some degree on their servers. For DBAs who may have heard rumours of its magic, then Part I of Andy Duncan and Jared Still's "Perl for Oracle DBAs" will prove to be a substantial grounding in the synergy that can arise between Oracle and Perl's virtues of Laziness, Impatience and Hubris. This section provides information on Perl's background, its strengths and provides instructions for installing the language on UNIX, Win32 and Cygwin. (For those not in the know: Cygwin is a free UNIX emulation layer for Windows that includes a substantial collection of GNU tools). Perl is the ideal language for DBAs in a heterogeneous environment.

Experienced Oracle DBAs with a Perl bent should feel free to skip straight to Part II, Extending Perl. Here the authors provide information on Perl GUI and Web extensions, plus some Open Source tools for Oracle that make use of these features. They also discuss a feature I really like: the ability to call Perl routines from PL/SQL, but as the authors point out, you should be aware of the security implications.

To my mind, Part III: The PDBA Toolkit is the most valuable part of the book. The authors have kindly provided a set of superb Perl tools for the Oracle DBA. Everyone will have their favourites, but mine include the ability to monitor alert logs in real time and a password client/server combo for centralised, encrypted management over the network. Last but not least: the ability to monitor SQL and store explain plans for historical comparison over time.

This book is a like a Tardis - its much bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside. The volume of information could have been overwhelming, but the authors have taken the time to patiently explain the topics from first principles without ever patronising the reader. That's a rare skill, and this is a fantastic book.

As an Oracle DBA the only problem I've found with Perl is that there is so much other information out there that it is difficult to find what you need. This book is ideal in that someone else has done all the hard work so there is now one definitve resource for Perl for DBA's and about time too. I've found all Oracle O'Reilly books exceptional and this one carries on the trend.

The best word to describe this book is 'WOW!' I had no idea that there was such an extensive set of perl tools and scripts for administering oracle databases. The book provides descriptions of the tools/scripts, instructions for download/installation and operational information. I can't wait to dive in and explore each of the topics in depth (should take me a year or so...).