Re: New books and new authors - and experience?

  • From: Mogens Nørgaard <mln@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2004 07:55:41 +0100

Oh, heck, now I've destroyed my promising career as professional proof reader of essential books. But it was a very, very small market to begin with, if you note the word "essential" :-).

Mogens

Richard Foote wrote:

Hi Morgens,

I'm currently writing a new features book on 11r (the r btw standards for
redundancies) and to think, I was going to ask you to proof read it.

Well you can just forget about it if that's your attitude !!

Cheers ;)

Richard
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mogens Nørgaard" <mln@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, March 17, 2004 9:41 AM
Subject: New books and new authors - and experience?




Friends,


I recently wrote this message, but then sent it just to myself in order
not to offend anyone or perhaps be misunderstood.

But after 14 days with this message in my inbox, I have decided to go
ahead and send it to the list:
=================================================================

It's becoming a habit to churn out books about topics that cannot
possibly have been explored yet. And certainly not in any scientific

manner.


How on Earth can we have books out with the word "10g" on the cover when
10g just came out, and we all know, that getting something as basic as
OEM (and certainly AWR/ADDM/ASH/Advisor services)  to work during the
Beta phase has been damned near impossible? If that is the case, how can
the books talk in detail about how fantastic these features are?
Sandra's last name is...

I don't really care whether the books were "betatized" or not, or
however various authors try to impress on people that their books are
better than the other's. These are all books written by people without
real experience in 10g (because it's bloody well impossible to HAVE real
experience yet!) talking about people writing books about something they
don't know enough about yet...

I fully understand Oracle's wishes here. I fully understand the
publisher's wishes here. I might even understand the author's wishes
here (or maybe not). But it's too much now. iAS.

I think it's time for all of us to stop buying sensationalist or
un-finished or whatever books and wait until books by people who've
actually done real work, in the real world, with 10g appear.

Hands down: Shouldn't we all be reading James Morle's book (titled *8i*)
or Jonathan's (titled *8i*) and LEARNING real stuff instead of just
running around in real and virtual book stores, looking for new sound
bites or cut/paste's from Oracle's own documentation?

Read Oracle's documentation first, try out 10g, then see if anybody with
REAL experience has written a book.

Of course they haven't. They don't exist, since the Oracle version
hasn't been out yet.

Oh, I know how this happens. Been there. You're approached by a
publisher who wants to publish fast and make lots of money for them and
you. If you don't say NO, then you're caught between delivering
SOMETHING and being blasted by the publisher. So you choose - perhaps -
to generate text and examples and stuff that make it appear as if you
actually WORKED with this new version of Oracle.

Of course you didn't. Ask the authors what customers or partners they
worked with using 10g. Ask them if this was real production or just the
usual "let's try this, let's try that" stuff. Ask. Then think. Of course
they havne't been able to do anything realistic yet.

Man, when I looked at the books offered from various publishers at the
RMOUG, there were a few good Oracle-related books (Dave Ensor's Design,
Cary's, Lawson's, Connor's, etc.) and about 90% of the displayed books
being ... well... not worth the money.

Mogens

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