Tom Kyte is of a rare breed. To begin, he's technically expert in his subject (administration of and development of applications for Oracle database management systems). What's more (and what distinguishes him from the ranks of the super-competent), he is both able and willing to share his considerable store of wisdom with Oracle users via books like Expert One on One: Oracle. Perhaps the best book about Oracle products ever put out, this book is a model of all aspects of technical publishing: scope, level of detail, clarity of explanations, and quality of examples. It's pretty much certain that you will learn a great deal about Oracle from Kyte's work, and that you'll become more capable in your work as a result of studying this book.
Kyte--it's very tempting to call him an Oracle oracle--seems not to have had to struggle to fit his message into the Wrox Press form, which relies on a running commentary interspersed with code listings and conceptual diagrams. Kyte's commentary is eminently informed and packed with references to the differences between that which is ideal and that which often must be done to accommodate reality. He takes care to explain how little-known pieces of the Oracle environment--and alternative ways of looking at the more familiar ones--solve problems, an approach that leads to elegant, efficient solutions. Kyte boosts his readers across the chasm that separates people who can write applications for Oracle databases from people who understand Oracle databases. --David Wall
Topics covered: Deep wisdom on developing applications for Oracle database management systems, as well as plenty of advice on designing and administering them. There are sections on general design and implementation practices, application architecture, locking and concurrency, transactions and rollbacks, importing and exporting, and lots more of interest to developers.
Thomas Kyte has a simple philosophy: You can treat Oracle as a black box and shove data inside of it, or you can learn how Oracle works and exploit it as a powerful computing environment. If you choose the latter, you will see there are few information management problems you cannot solve quickly and elegantly.
Kyte has selected the most important features and techniques to discuss in Expert One-on-One Oracle, which he teaches in a proof-by-example manner. He discusses available features, implementing software using these features, and avoiding potential pitfalls.
