Oracle Class – Wissem's Oracle and NOSQL Tips – Tunisia's First Oracle, NOSQL Website

Packt is pleased to announce a special eBook offer – stock your reader this Christmas! During this celebration, you can buy two or more Packt eBook’s of your choice for just $5 | €4 | £3 | AUS$5 each.
This offer is available from 20th December 2012 until midnight 3rd January 2013.

Find more information here : http://www.packtpub.com/news/stock-your-reader-christmas

Birmingham-based IT publisher Packt Publishing is about to publish its 1000^th title. Packt Publishing would like you to join them in celebrating this event and receive a surprise gift – to get involved you just need to have already registered, or sign up for a FREE Packt account.

During the event,  Packt will be inviting anyone already registered on http://www.packtpub.com/login, and who registers before 30th of September 2012 to receive a surprise gift!

Let’s register and discover what the surprise is

The author Saurabh K. Gupta has successfully managed to write an excellent book about Oracle PL/SQL. The book name is: Oracle Advanced PL/SQL Developer Professional Guide.

From the concept to the syntax, this book covers what is needed to know to prepare the 1Z0-146 certification exam. It focuses on concepts, and lot of examples. If you want to learn or improve your PL/SQL knowledge, this book is for you.

The first two chapters focus on the PL/SQL concepts and design. Chapter 3 talks about Collections ; Nested tables, VARRAY with exercises.

The book also talks about external routines ; executing C and Java programs. In this book, Saurabh demonstrates how to implement VPD (Virtual Private Database).

Chapter 6 and 7 explain the use of Large objects; LOB; CLOB, BLOB and BFILE also, the 11g SecureFile LOBs.

The chapter 8 and 9 talk about Tuning methods and techniques to improve Performance; the 11g Result Cache, Tuning PL/SQL code and compilation techniques.

The book also explain tracing methods and Profiling.

The book contains a lot of tips , techniques and exercises to help you to achieve the 1Z0-146 certification exam.

In summary, the author Saurabh K. Gupta has produced a work of great quality and value. I recommend this book to all PL/SQL developers; beginners and advanced programmers.

Find the Oracle Advanced PL/SQL Developer Professional Guide book on: Packtpub | Amazon

My friend and former ACE Director Porus Homi Havewala’s new book on
Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control, is now available, this is
the First published EM 12c Cloud Control book in the world.

If you are interested in learning about the capabilities of Enterprise
Manager 12c, please have a look. Electronic copies are available too.
I am requesting a book copy so I will post soon my review here.

http://www.packtpub.com/oracle-enterprise-manager-12c-cloud-control/book
Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control: Managing Data Center Chaos

I have been asked by Saurabh Gupta to review his book “Oracle Advanced PL/SQL Developer Professional Guide“.

This book will help developers to master the advanced PL/SQL concepts for 1Z0-146 exam.

Here is the book page link: Oracle Advanced PL/SQL Developer Professional Guide : http://www.packtpub.com/oracle-advanced-pl-sql-developer-professional-guide/book

In the next few weeks, I will write a review of this book to complete this post.

Packt Publishing prepares for COLLABORATE 12 with discounts on Oracle titles all month
As a leading publisher of Oracle books/eBooks, Packt Publishing is inviting their readers to celebrate the upcoming COLLABORATE 12 conference being held in Las Vegas from 22nd-26th April.

(more…)

The authors, Ben Prusinski and Syed Jaffer Hussain , have successfully managed to write an excellent book about RAC 11gR1 and RAC 11gR2, something not really easy to accomplish, and they have clearly demonstrated the differences between both releases.

From the concept to the syntax, this book covers what is needed to successfully build a RAC environment. It focuses on concepts, installation, administration, backup and recovery, streams and data guard. If you want to build a highly available environment, this book is for you.

The two first chapters clearly focus on the high availability concepts and architecture of a RAC environment. Many DBAs jump directly to the syntax and forget about the concepts and the architecture. Those DBA will face serious problems with each new release of Oracle RAC. I highly recommend to read those 2 first chapters before jumping to the others. If you are a single instance DBA who never managed to install Oracle clusters, these two first chapters are also for you; read them and learn how to design the key components like networks and storage.

Chapters 3 and 4 discuss Oracle Clusterware installation including grid infrastructure and ASM. They help you build the first components of your clusterware.

Chapter 5 is about managing and troubleshooting Oracle 11g . After installing the grid infrastructure you will be faced with many background processes. This chapter teaches you the commands to successfully administer your clusterware components as well as troubleshooting any cluster issue.

Chapter 6 is about installing the RAC database with many tips and best practices to follow.

Chapter 7 deals with back up and recovery of RAC databases. One of the most important task for a HA DBA. Tips and suggestions have been provided in this chapter.

After building the RAC environment, every DBA should care about the database performance; chapter 8 covers the most important components to focus on in your day to day monitoring.

Chapter 9 covers the upgrade of Oracle 10g R2 Clusterware to Oracle 11g R1 and how to Upgrade to Oracle 11g R2 Clusterware. This is a really important task for any HA DBA.

The chapter 10, in my opinion, one of the best chapters of this book, is about real-world examples; the authors shared their extensive experience of practical scenarios and examples.

The book ends with a great appendix containing a vast amount of Oracle RAC commands and tips.
In summary, the authors have produced a work of great quality and value. I recommend this book to all DBAs working on RAC systems for the following reasons:

• Clear explanation of RAC concepts and architecture.
• Clear step by step installation of clusterware and RAC databases.
• Real-world examples and tips.
• Troubleshooting guide for most common performance issues in RAC.
• Good summary of the most important RAC commands.

Find the Oracle 11g R1/R2 Real Application Clusters Essentials book on: Packtpub | Amazon

Few days before, I have started a conversation with Mr. Syed Jaffer Hussain about Real Application Clusters and about his new book “Oracle 11g R1/R2 Real Application Clusters Essentials”. During the conversation, Mr. Syed Jaffer Hussain explained to me why his book is different than other real Application Clusters Books. I have accepted to review the book and it’s actually a pleasure to do it.
Mr. Syed Jaffer Hussain is an Oracle 10g Certified Master (OCM), an Oracle Certified Professional DBA (OCP) – 8i, 9i, 10g and 11g
and an Oracle 10g Certified RAC Expert (OCE). He is also an Oracle ACE director.
You can visit his blog here : http://jaffardba.blogspot.com
and you can also buy his book here: Book
In 2 weeks I will recieve the print version and then in 3 or 4 weeks I will publish my book review here in my website, in wiki.oracle.com, mix.oracle.com and in amazon.

Thank you,
Wissem EL KHLIFI