How to Study Oracle [New 2008-05: added comments on various public forums] Assuming you want to study Oracle database, specifically to prepare yourself as a DBA, not other products such as Apps or Developer Suite... 1.0 Download from otn.oracle.com, or borrow CDs for, Oracle server software enterprise edition. Make sure it's not any other lesser edition. Choose the OS you're most comfortable with. Select the version that is either (a) the latest, or (b) the one your company is using, or (c) the most popular. Install it and create a database. 1.1 Download full documentation from docs.oracle.com for your version. If you're short of space, choose to install only HTML pages by deleting all .pdf files after installation, i.e. file copying. (If you like PDF better than HTML, then delete HTML files leaving PDFs). 2.0 If you have little experience with Oracle, find a practical book such as some OCP (Oracle Certified Professional) guide or Oracle 101 and quickly go through it. Combine this study with reading Admin guide. 2.1 If you have some experience, read the Concepts manual now. It's a tedious, seemingly thankless process. But months of reading it, with frequent hands-on work and experiment on your database, is the fastest way to learn Oracle. 2.11 After a week of reading Concepts manual, you can start to read on public forums (see below). This is because it's simply not possible you'll encounter a large variety of problems in your own study. By reading messages posted by others, you indirectly learn from their real-life experience. Ignore the messages that are too difficult or non-technical, and research those you just learned. [2008-05,-09] Comments on various public forums: --------------- BEGIN --------------- * Mailing list Oracle-L (http://www.freelists.org/list/oracle-l): Since Steve Adams, the owner of ixora.com.au, took over the list administrator position (in September 2004?), this mailing list has significantly increased its technical density of the content, member professionalism, and overall technical level of the members. Off-topic messages are drastically cut down. People not behaving well are shut out of the door. This list is highly recommended. * OTN forum (http://forums.oracle.com): Since Oracle is occasionally monitoring, there's no bad guy. Unsupported and undocumented features may be less discussed. The only problem is site availability, i.e. lack of high uptime. Nevertheless, this forum is highly recommended. * Newsgroup comp.databases.oracle.server (http://groups.google.com/group/comp.databases.oracle.serve): This is the most free and easiest to access means to post and read Oracle DBA messages. But bear in mind that ever since the inception of Usenet, newsgroups have off-topic messages, flames (argument among people that don't add value and mostly attack others personally), and other non-professional postings. This Oracle server newsgroup is below average compared to most other computer newsgroups, mainly due to a few not very knowledgeable people having a habit of insulting others. Nevertheless, you should never ignore messages from Jonathan Lewis, Charles Hooper, ..., if you do watch this group. * DBA Village (dba-village.com): Mostly European members; hosted in Belgium. Professionalism is high. Since the site is inaccessible without a password even for reading, search engines can't index the messages. This means you can't rely on Google to find your or others's past postings. (2009-04 update: This seems to have changed.) * Metalink forums (https://metalink.oracle.com/metalink/plsql/for_main.searchForum): Accessible with Metalink login. Only searchable by Metalink, not general search engines (Google, etc). Web interface is awkward. Oracle employees ceased to support (answer questions) on these forums in 2005(?). Therefore its value drastically degraded. * (Chinese only) Itpub (http://www.itpub.net/list.html): If you can read and write Chinese, the forums on this site are highly recommended. Every forum is moderated with multiple moderators to guarantee certain technical level and members' professionalism. Most members are probably between 20 and 35 as of this writing. Technical level has steadily grown over the past seven years. But keep in mind that Chinese web sites have lots of silly Javascript fanfare that may drive your browser crazy, and the way Itpub is designed encourages some members to post useless messages (for them to use as a bookmark, to push up the posting to the top, etc). --------------- END --------------- 2.12 Constantly check the Reference manual and Admin guide while reading Concepts because memorizing hundreds of initialization parameters, DBA_ and V$ views can't be achieved in a few weeks. 3.0 After the drudge of sequential read of the Concepts and scattered read of Reference and hands-on work with Admin guide, you can read in either sequential or scattered manner: Performance tuning manual, Administration manual, "Effective Oracle by Design" (by Tom Kyte) and as great reference due to lack of updated versions, "Expert One On One" (by Tom Kyte) 4.0 You need to constantly search on the following three web sites when you have problems. 4.1 Google Usenet/Newsgroup archive (http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search). You can put in group name, most likely comp.databases.oracle.server, occasionally comp.databases.oracle.misc or comp.databases.oracle.tools. 4.2 Google Advanced Search (http://www.google.com/advanced_search). After this search, you may or may not search the same thing on other web sites such as Altavista, which was used by us before Google came to life. But occasionally they do have something Google hasn't indexed yet. I usually try Altavista and/or Yahoo. If it's still not found, I either give up or try metacrawler.com.[note] 4.3.0 Oracle Metalink if your company purchased Oracle support. This is the only search site that is Oracle-aware. By that I mean it knows "ORA-01000" is the same as "ORA-1000" so you don't have to search twice as on any generic search site. It knows "user$" is not the same as "user" as all other search engines would assume. In addition, if you need to search for an Oracle bug report or patch, this is the only place. 4.3.1 Oracle Metalink Advanced search. Bookmark the no-frame page URL http://metalink.oracle.com/metalink/plsql/kno_main.newAdvancedQuery If you search for a keyword or a string that is too obscure, do remember to check the Bug Database as well as Archived Articles checkboxs so you get more hits. [continued in OracleStudy2.txt, a note of Oracle research in general] Yong Huang 2004,2005, 2008 ___________________________ [note] The less known MetaCrawler search engine is unique in that it submits your search string to multiple search engines for you. Once I was searching for "Second pass of redo data" (quotes included as exact phrase). I only found it on Metacrawler, pointing to a university professor's web site, and says the document is "[Found on Windows Live]". Indeed, I searched on live.com and found the document. But I normally would never search on Microsoft Live.com site.