The Oracle DBA Checklists Pocket Reference provides a handy compilation of checklists and procedures for some of the more common tasks in Oracle database administration. Anyone who has worked even for a short time with Oracle, knows how daunting it can be sometimes to swim through the enormous sea of books, articles, and vendor documentation, and still be able to put together a clear picture of how to perform common administrative tasks. This helpful pocket reference written by the gurus at Quest Software does just that for some of the key aspects of managing Oracle databases.

The collection of checklists covers three main topics:

• Database Management
• Installation and Configuration
• Network Management

In the section on database management you'll find daily, weekly, and monthly checklists of those things you probably ought to be doing on a normal basis to keep your databases helthy, and to (hopefully) be forewarned before any real problems show up. Also included in this section are steps to preparing a fresh instance for production as well as checklists covering recovery procedures for various failure scenarios.

The section on installation and configuration is OS agnostic, providing brief, but complete installation steps for getting Oracle running on UNIX, NT, and VMS. An overview of preparing a Parallel Oracle Database is also included.

The last section in the book covers aspects of Oracle networking. Checklists for setting up and testing Oracle network connecticity, naming, the listener, and multi-threaded-server are covered, as well as tips on tracing client and listener connections.

This reference will likely appeal most to new DBAs and those still trying to get a grasp on the firehose of information, and will provide good direction in setting up your own comprehensive procedures for common maintenance items. The book pinpoints those tasks most important out of everything you can do to get your database running, and to keep it running well.

One of the downsides of the book is its brevity. DBA checklists wont give you much background behind each step in its checklists, and serves not as turorial, but as a reminder, something to glue all those disassociated references and 1000+ page door stops together. For example, in the section convering Oracle's MTS setup it mentions how you can check for the number of MTS dispatchers, and the number of shared server processes running, but it doesn't explain much about what these are, nor why they are useful. So a fair amount of prior knowledge about Oracle will be required of the reader.

Overall the book makes a good addition to any DBA's library, providing good direction in common tasks and needed reminders of easily forgotten, but very important steps in your day-to-day database management.

Overall rating: 7/10