Customer Reviews (2)

Have to have - resource
Sets the standard for the form that useful application debugging information should come in.From any vendor - within any platform.The content is sliced a # of different ways - and well, essentially - it's one of 2 or 3 books no mainframe programmer should be without

a Book every Programmer needs to have on their Desk
Provides not only an explantion of the abend, the book also gives you a detailed background on the possible causes. Potential abend resolutions presented cover both COBOL and JCL specifically as well as general comments, dump analysis and what steps to take to correct the abending application. The book also presents background (limited detail) on printing Dumps, source code degugging and tips and techniques. Definitely a Book to have when tackling Production abends and problems where time is of the essence. ... Read more

Product Description
Most Oracle DBAs spend the majority of their time each day doing pretty much the same things they do every other day, which is great, since they don't have any problem remembering the syntax and commands they want to use. But for the rest of their time, they're doing something they may only do once every few months -- and that's the time they need help. Not from a huge instructional manual, or awkward online documentation -- they have plenty of both and will use them when they need to. What DBA's really need is a simple, small, single volume quick reference that will remind them of the syntax and options of a command they rarely use, or give them a quick reminder of the available views and tables that make up a DBAs life. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Does not compete online references
Type this in Google: "oracle9i sql reference contents".
You will find better reference, which matches your Oracle version perfectly and contain examples, unlike this book. I bet that this book is a printed version of a similar web site as well, because I found a lot of underlined words in it; some of them links to somewhere in the book, some not.

Prashant Dangash
The book is truly what the title suggest - a quick reference guide. It makes an Oracle user's life easy by putting SQL commands in a clear concise manner.
If you are an Oracle user, who uses Oracle extensively using SQL command interface and not the GUI, this book is for you.

Practically useless
80% of this book are flowchart diagrams. 20% of the book are useless tables. There are zero explanations of Oracle or any of the SQL and PL\SQL commands the book professes to explain (only through the flowchart diagrams and tables of course). I would have never bought this book if I had perused through it first. Buyer beware, this book is contains no useful information to the Oracle DBA.

Clear and simple to use
Remember the early days of Oracle's products? Now we've reached the heights of Oracle 9i. How things are grown. The multiple table joins; the many obscure syntactical variants added by what are now centuries of person years of coding. Perhaps it is inevitable that any successful software will continually add refinements that increase its capabilities, but usually this is done at a concomitant loss of simplicity. Typically you as a database administrator will rarely use most features. But how to find the occasional rarity that you need, and have forgotten (or perhaps never knew)?

By definition, the vendor's manuals are authoritative. But often these fall short in usability or pedagogy. (Oracle is by no means alone in this.) So here, Russel and Cordingley give you an independent, simple index into 9i. A quick perusal shows no index. But a second look shows that the entire book is really a graphical index into, and a refresher of, the command syntax. Like conventional indices, the book does not attempt to explain its entries. For example, on page 146, we see a graph for "add hash substitution". They assume you know what this means, but that you need a quick reminder of HOW to invoke it. Given that you have the database and its online help accessible (otherwise why would you need this book?), this is a fair assumption. Clearly, you can consult the online or hardcopy documentation for more information. The stress in the book is on simplicity.

There is a little irony here. A database is a means whereby you can store data in a silo and easily get summaries and subsets ("views") of it. When you strip away the technical jargon, every database package aspires to this. If you regard the commands and capabilities of a database as data (or metadata), then you cannot usually change these. But how do you get summaries and views of THIS data? That is what the vendor's online help and documentation is all about.

The irony about this book is not that it was written, but that it was not written by Oracle. The vendor's raison d'etre is to provide tools for access to information. But here, others have seen a need to write another tool to get at the vendor's own data. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Best short personality textbook ever written.
In an age where virtually all personality textbooks are encyclopdic in nature, this classic texbook provides a beautifully concise overview of the major ideas in the history of personality theory. For years it was the perfect textbook for an instructor who desired to use a core text, supplemented by other, primary articles or books on personality. It exemplified an ideas-oriented, liberal-arts approach to personality, as opposed to the dreary, technical, detailed treatment of a million modern research studies found in some personality texts today. The bad news is that the book has been out of print for some time. The good news is that Hogan has a new textbook, coauthored with Robert Smither, to replace his classic text. The new text remains true to the spirit of the original, while adding a new applied dimension. The new textbook has also overcomes the one annoying feature of the original, which was a 1960-ish obsession with whether a theory provided a basis for criticising the status quo. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

When do you double?
Everything you ever wanted to know about doubles. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Great Theory to learn court reporting
This book is great for learning to be a court reporter.It teaches a computer compatible theory that is one of the easiest and quickest theories to learn if not the easiest. ... Read more

Product Description
This work provides mathematics for plotting the remote control of robots. It offers readers a spatial representation for the joints and links of a robot that can be readily sketched, with explicit programmable kinematic equations. The book adopts a practical approach - for example, techniques developed in the text convey the skills necessary to plan a trajectory at a remote terminal and download it for real-time execution by a robot controller. ... Read more