Product Description

This book never loses sight of its instructional mission: to effectively utilize the Oracle database from the .NET environment. Though Visual Studio and Oracle form a popular and powerful duo, there is a noticeable lack of written material in this area. The result: projects that often turn out with less-than-optimal solutions, due to lack of "synergy" between the application developer and the database.

The primary code in the book will be C#, but the code download will also be available in VB.NET (with an appendix describing terms of use). Hence, this book provides a one-stop reference for any VS.NET programmer using Oracle. The author maintains solid focus on databases&emdash;emphasizing the use of specific features from a Visual Studio application. The text also includes crucial aspects of developing Oracle-based applications. Assumably, you are already comfortable with the VS.NET environment, and with the aid of this book, you will come to work effectively with the Oracle database as well.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #812044 in Books
• Published on: 2004-11-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 472 pages

About the Author
Mark A. Williams is currently working as a production Oracle DBA. He has been working with Oracle since database version 7.0.1.16, and holds Oracle Certified Professional certifications for versions 7, 8, 8i, and 9i. Prior to becoming a DBA, Williams developed corporate software applications that used the Oracle database as a back-end. Over the years, he has worked as both an employee and an independent contractor on a variety of Oracle projects.

Customer Reviews

Useful for me
As someone who has written some .NET applications using MS Access and SQL Server I found the material to be appropriate and helpful as I am new to Oracle. Some things that I found especially helpful were:

- discussing the difference between an Oracle database and an instance

- what the various parameter files such as the tnsnames.ora and sqlnet.ora files are for and how to configure them

- the examples of how to use bind variables, pl/sql, and the advanced connections chapter

I do agree with the first reviewer that this book does somewhat sew together material from other sources (which I actually found helpful not a negative), but I disagree that the examples were not helpful or extensive enough - there were appropriate examples for each topic so far as I could tell.

All and all I would say this is a worthwhile book if you are new to Oracle and need to figure out how to get started developing applications for Oracle.

Good, but still basic
From the title you would expect this to drill into some deep Oracle technical issues. It doesn't do that. It's a fairly screenshot intensive walkthrough of basic Oracle use in .NET. It starts with connectivity, information retrieval and manipulation. Then exception handling, stored procedures and large object operations. There is some coverage of performance issues.

There is a lot of good content here. It's well written and organized. The screenshots aren't overwhelming and the sample code is good. A good book on Oracle use in .NET, even if it is a little mis-titled.

Confirmed my real-world experience
I put a system into production last fall with .NET and Oracle. Wish I had this book nine months ago! Mark has good advice for someone new to Oracle, but familiar with .NET. I've gone back and tweaked the system based on Mark's recommendations. I'm happy.