Rating:  - Great Book!
This book contains a wealth of information about how to evaluate and test the Oracle Cost Based Optimizer. Jonathan presents the material in a very easy to follow style. All the examples and scripts that he provides work as written. I would highly recommend this book.
Rating: - Invaluable Oracle Resource
Jonathan Lewis has perfomed an invaluable service to the Oracle community. He doesn't just offer opinions of how the CBO makes decisions from his vast experience. He also offers the scripts he used to verify behavior of the Oracle CBO. This equips the user to replicate Jonathan's work with newer versions of oracle and adapt the scripts to your circumstances.
Dennis Williams
Rating:  - I was disappointed
It doesn't mean you won't love the book. I found it to be far too narrow and, even as an Oracle OCP, boringly written. That may say more about me than it does about Jonathin Lewis, who I know is brilliant and has written brilliant stuff before. I just didn't get as much out of it as I thought I would.
Rating: - Jonathan is a tease... but it's a great book!
Each quarter my team of DBA's has one book that we read and discuss in team meetings. This quarter, Cost-Based Oracle Fundamentals is it. This book is a wholly remarkable book for the moderate to advanced DBA. It is a deep dive into the Oracle optimizer, providing some wonderful insights into not only how it works, but why. It is not a book for the faint of hart, or those waiting breathlessly for retirement. It is a book for those who want to understand the CBO in more depth.
Within the book, Jonathan provides insights into how the CBO *should* work. He follows up often by demonstrating the maturing (or devolving as the case may be) of the CBO from version to version. Beyond his own experimentation and results, he leads the reader into the process that he has followed to come to understand the internals of the CBO, providing a road map allowing the reader to continue to explore the optimizer in future releases.
However, I must take Jonathan to task, for he is a nasty tease. This book was released about two years ago. In it, he leads us on with promises of forthcoming volumes 2 and 3, dangling the carrot out there for us to follow. Sadly, these volumes are yet to be seen. Jonathan! Quit running to and fro filling our heads with knowledge at various conferences and write those books man!
A caution for the new DBA or the cursory SQL developer, you may find this book overwhelming at first glance. For the new or even intermediate DBA, it might be hard to derive practical application of what Jonathan is teaching at first glance. Take your time with the material and the insight that you will gain will be invaluable.
Overall, if you want a book with meat, then this is the book for you. It will expand your mind and the way you look at the Oracle CBO.
Rating: - Invaluable Knowledge and Applicability
This book gets a prized spot on my technical shelf. It is a challenging read, and has taken the most time of any book I have to get through, but it is quite good. The optimizer is such a core part of what makes Oracle worth the investment, that any DBA who does not understand it is doing a disservice to the company investing such capital into the product.
Lewis' use of proof through example is second to none, and leaves me feeling confident about the knowledge I've gained. His insights are not only theoretical, but quite applicable. I learned much about manipulating and using the DBMS_STATS package, about data model design and why data knowledge is so critical to the DBA.
My nervousness about hints and about upgrades was reinforced with concrete examples that have improved my test plans, upgrade methodologies and overall made me a more competent DBA. I've directly used this knowledge to support my clients in better ways than I would have before it, and that is well worth the price of admission and the time to get through such an in-depth work.
Thanks Jonathan!
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