At 836 pages and CD, Oracle 8 Administration and Management is a good accompaniment for Database Administrators working with Oracle 7 or 8 on Unix, NT or VMS systems. As a testament to its usefulness, my review of this book was made harder as it was often borrowed by colleagues and I had to fight to get it back!

The book has been written for beginning and experienced DBAs alike and covers both version 7 and the new object oriented features of Oracle 8. After the components that make up a Typical ORACLE installation are described, the book covers installation, maintenance and the all-important backup and recovery issues. The book covers client-server issues well and was obviously written by someone who knows the product well.

Just one minor winge. Seeing as C.J. Date's "Introduction to Database Systems" is now just one volume and at it's 6th edition, I'm assuming that this book has been revamped from an earlier edition and he hasn't updated his references. This is unfortunate as Date's coverage of object orientation has also been updated which would make the reference more relevant than reading volume 1 of the 4th edition as mentioned in the book. Putting that aside, this book is fine and I recommend it.