Though written in a serious way, this book is easy to follow, with all the hallmarks of a technically rigorous work based on years of practice in Oracle database administration. Even though the material is meant for highly technical database administrators (DBAs), the author easily captivates new readers with a flow and style that are quite consistent. Debes uses unambiguous terms and jargon, and provides clear definitions. For example, Debes distinguishes between the often misused terms “database” and “DBMS”; annoyingly, even seasoned database technical writers and the Oracle Corporation use these terms in a confusing and inconsistent manner.

As stated on the cover, this book covers “advanced administration, tuning, and troubleshooting using undocumented features,” making it only appropriate for readers with advanced database administration skills. True to its “secrets of” title, this seems to be the only book that covers the Oracle database management system (DBMS) and database. Its insights and caveats will greatly help database professionals. As Debes states, it will help readers involved with performance optimization who have “the urge to understand the secrets of Oracle,” and want to answer the following question: “How can I make Oracle go faster?” It is different from other books in that it is not a reference manual, a summary of information, or a detailed and definitive discussion on a particular topic. Instead, it provides exactly what it claims to: true secrets, hidden in various tools and techniques of the gigantic, world-renowned software that is Oracle. Debes discovers and reveals undocumented internal algorithms, together with treatments of procedural language/structured query language (PL/SQL) packages and various parameters.

This book is a significant contribution to database administration, especially since much of the undocumented material presented in this text is not addressed in Oracle’s Metalink support platform. This book is successful because of the following features: its background information on networking, operating systems, and programming; its structured approach to dealing with undocumented administration material; the chapters’ independence--apart from the introduction and a few later chapters, the material can be read in any order; its access to Oracle’s online source code depot; and its coverage of Oracle 10g and Oracle 11g’s extended SQL trace files.

Overall, this book is an important addition to database administration literature. It is free of typographical errors, and, as a bonus, it includes an excellent glossary.