This is the first book I have read from Sam Alapati and Charles Kim. Coincidently or not, Sam is also the author of the "OCP Oracle Database 11g: New Features for Administrators Exam Guide (Exam 1Z0-050)" book.

After completing this book I am very happy with what I have learned. The authors are very thorough in their coverage of the new features in 11g and do a good job of providing applicable real world examples.



Chapter 9 on ASM covered the new features well and Oracle has made some nice improvements. ASM is a growth area for Oracle and am looking forward to it becoming friendlier and easier to use. Moving files in and out of ASM has been made easier in Oracle 11g.



Chapter 11 on Application Development will be best utlized by developers or DBA's that are involved with development beyond the intermediate level. This chapter also introduces DBAs to APEX.



Chapter 12 is one of the most important chapters. This chapter focuses on Data Warehousing and includes the new partitioning features. The examples are easy to understand and are applicable to the real world. This chapter also does an excellent job on explaing Oracle's next generation LOBs called "Secure Files". This is a must read chapter.



If I could have added a chapter to this book it would be a chapter dedicated to RAC. Even though 11g does not bring too many new features to RAC it does have a few. For example the new features on parallel execution I do not think are mentioned. Their are also enhanced configuration assistants that can be better explained and can be found in a single place.



Overall this is an excellent book and for someone who is just starting to work with 11g this is the best place to start.