Comments about oreilly Java Programming with Oracle JDBC:

I found the book very useful, however, I have the following comments.

Null Dates: It would be nice if the discussion on Handling Null Values had also discussed null date values.

Performance: I found that this book's outlook on the use of PreparedStatement objects and CallableStatement objects, as they relate to performance, is directly opposite of opinions found in the book "Expert One-On-One Oracle", by Tom Kyte. It seems that this book performs performance tests in a Single User environment, whereas Tom Kyte's book performs test in a Multi-User environment.

Comments about oreilly Java Programming with Oracle JDBC:

I take what I said about Ch18, back. It's all good.

Comments about oreilly Java Programming with Oracle JDBC:

An excellent coverage of Oracle's implementation of JDBC, this book beats your expectations

Meet the middle ground where the strengths of Java and Oracle work in synergy - the JDBC. Whether making simple database connections or using the Oracle 8i's sophisticated object-relational features, the authors peel the onion very well with detailed information and cleverly written examples. After a brief overview of JDBC, several different types of database clients are discussed in detail - the applets, the Servlets, the Server side internal drivers and those managed by J2EE using JNDI and connection pooling.

A whole section is dedicated to modes of interaction between Java programs and the JDBC API such as using cursors, submitting prepared statements and ResultSet manipulation. A great deal of good advice is offered to help you choose between the options. The chapter on Object-Relational SQL covers broad ground on both Weakly Typed Object SQL and Strongly Typed Object SQL.

Enterprise essentials such as Security, locking, transaction management supports for data encryption and SSL issues, performance tuning and testing strategies - are addressed in detail. This book is treasure trove if newer feats of Oracle are of Interest to you. I found immediate application for features such as creating object tables and column objects based on user-defined data types, support for really big streaming data types such as BFILEs and LONG RAW and batch processing for my project.

Overall, this book has everything you need to learn, know and master in order to leverage the essential two great technologies - JDBC and Oracle. Every serious Java developer should have it at arms reach.

Comments about oreilly Java Programming with Oracle JDBC:

Excellent technical text! As good as "Database Programming with JDBC and Java, ed [12]" was not.

Another O'Reilly win.

Several minor complaints:

o For a book published half-year after 9i release, this one contains very little 9i-updated information. Inline notes on 9i improvements would have been very helpful (eg, "PreparedStatement cannot write LOBs with OCI driver" doesn't appear to be true in 9i; a more egregious fault is stating that Oracle doesn't have a TIMESTAMP SQL datatype, on p432).

o Ch18, "Detection and Locking", has nothing to do with JDBC. It presents a tediously reasoned solution to a non-problem.

Comments about oreilly Java Programming with Oracle JDBC:

I'm prototyping an Oracle database application "engine" for use in a planning and estimation application (as in project management). The idea was to use Java and Oracle 8i's object-relational features, specifically to take advantage of performance improvements and generally to get the advantages of object oriented design. I had reached the point of implementing Oracle's CustomDatum interface when I got this book. I was initially disappointed when I opened the book and found it discussed on the last eleven pages of the section on Object-Relational SQL. But then I read the Introduction, the first chapter, and on and on....

It's immediately obvious Mr. Bales is familiar with actual process of developing real applications. He has presented this complex and complicated subject in a direct and pleasant manner for advanced programmers. Relatively new to Java but very familiar with Oracle, I found his organization of the material very helpful - and the sections on Relational SQL and Object-Relational SQL based on sound knowledge and experience. Mr. Bales includes a final Section on Essentials where he discusses transactions and locking, performance and trouble shooting - all very practical and extremely useful if you are developing serious applications. And yes, those last eleven pages were very helpful.

I have not found a book that addresses using Oracle JDBC in application development directly, and have found few books that address database application development very well - but this book does both. One small thing I thought was missing were guidelines for using weakly typed object SQL vice strongly typed - in other areas good advice was offered.

Before I bought this book, I used Oracle's documentation at otn.oracle.com. This required a file of bookmarks, several large block diagrams, lots of notes and much patience. It's much better to start with this book - and get a well-organized and coherent view along with practical advice and examples, before wading into Oracle's extensive documentation.

Larry Johnson

KeepItSimpleEngineering,Inc.

www.kise-inc.com