Thomas Kyte has a simple philosophy: You can treat Oracle as a black box and shove data inside of it, or you can learn how Oracle works and exploit it as a powerful computing environment. If you choose the latter, you will see there are few information management problems you cannot solve quickly and elegantly.
Kyte has selected the most important features and techniques to discuss in Expert One-on-One Oracle, which he teaches in a proof-by-example manner. He discusses available features, implementing software using these features, and avoiding potential pitfalls.
