There are so many computer books in the world. A few of them are lousy, most of them are pretty good, and several are excellent.

Fortunately for the Gross National Products of nations, we all buy many of these books.

Unfortunately, most of these books are never read, just skipped through and left to gather dust on the shelves with all the other good books (and course materials) that we never revisited.

So many wise words, wise thoughts, funny and instructive stories, and so many years of experience collected in these books. And so many people willing to commit (!) the same mistakes over and over again because they never read the books, but instead perform the famous skip/skim procedure.

Many authors ask for the skip/skim treatment of their books because, unlike Iggy, they either quote extensively from manuals or try to advise the reader about the chapters he or she can skip or skim.

The few people who actually read a handful of good Oracle database books from cover to cover, including trying out stuff on their test system as they read—they will have a much easier and more entertaining work life with Oracle’s database.

Iggy is a workhorse. He wrote this book while holding down a day job at Database Specialists, editing the journal of the Northern California Oracle Users Group (NoCOUG), and making presentations at the RMOUG, IOUG, and Hotsos conferences. He’s also a thinking man, who decided (I think) to write the book he wished he’d had when he started with databases.

So when I looked through the sections and chapters (all of them very useful, by the way), I saw a pattern:

Section I contains information you can easily find in manuals on http://tahiti.oracle.com or a good textbook on database theory. The information in Section II could also be extracted from the manuals if you knew what you were looking for in the first place—and had the many hours required at your disposal.

Sections III and IV, however, could only be written by someone who has acquired experience, has made mistakes (and learned from them), and has thought about his job and his role in the database world—and discussed it with others.

This is a very good book, Iggy. I want a signed copy of it.

—Mogens Nørgaard

CEO of Miracle A/S and co-founder of the OakTable network