Being an Oracle developer and heavily into Java I loved this book.

It assumes nothing and starts out easily, explaining the tools, database and a simple guide to tables and data types.

It even gives an overview of SQL and PL/SQL just in case.

After that firm foundation, just in case you needed it, it moves onto object-relational and object features and an introduction to JDBC.

The progression in then to advanced JDBC and J2EE persistence, followed by the use of Enterprise Java Beans and object-relational mapping s to Java Data Objects.

All in all a very good book. Filled with simple to understand examples and the output they generate, which is always a good thing.