How to Study Oracle

[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 From otn.oracle.com (or technet.oracle.com) download, 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 (a) the latest, or (b) the one your company is using, or (c) the most
popular. Install it.

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 such as 
comp.databases.oracle.server 
(groups.google.com/group/comp.databases.oracle.serve)
forums.oracle.com 
Oracle-L (www.freelists.org/archives/oracle-l/) 
This is because 
it's simply not possible you would encounter a variety of 
problems in your own study. By reading messages posted by others, you 
indirectly learn from their real-life experience. Ignore those that are too 
difficult and research those you just learned.

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)
Oracle Backup and Recovery (by Rama Velpuri) 
Practical Oracle8i (by Jonathan Lewis)
Scaling Oracle8i (by James Morle)

and eventually, if you're still interested in Oracle, Steve Adams's book or 
articles on his web site.

4.0 You need to constantly search on the following three web sites when you have
problems.

4.1 Google Usenet/Newsgroup archive (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 (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 alltheweb.com 
can find something Google hasn't indexed yet.

4.3.0 Oracle Metalink. 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, which is
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