Hans Forbrich

*With apologies to Victor from Just for Laughs

Oracle Open World is over for another year. This one has been rather interesting and very special for me for a lot of reasons, not the least being this was my first as an ACE Director.

There are a lot of thanks to hand out
- to Justin for being the energy and brains of OTN;
- to Lillian and Vikki for herding the cats called ACEs and ACE Directors;
- to Lewis for getting the Birds of a Feather session going;
- to Eddie and Tim and Mark and Dan and Mogens and ... for mentoring;
- to Oracle Open World team for the great show;
- to all those I've inadvertently insulted by leaving your names out;

and to each and every one who introduced yourselves and chatted with me.

As always, I learned a lot about Oracle and the Oracle community, and leave wanting more. I spent much more time networking than ever, which simply confirmed how great of a community this really is.

I already have some tentative invitations to speak or teach and hope to see and meet more of you through the year.

As already noted, my first reaction to Larry's announcement was "nice - but irrelevant". However, I promised myself that I would look at the Oracle hardware announcement in more detail.

Of course, I took a look at Kevin Closson's blog and related 'FAQ' at http://kevinclosson.wordpress.com/ and that is giving me some ideas of the Exadata capabilities.

I also started to read some of the materials at OTN. And the relevant pages at Oracle.com. And the Oracle online price list. (Note to Oracle: it is not easy to find the Exadata info from OTN home page. And there is no entry at all in the Oracle Store.)

Some up front observations:

1) The Exadata is a storage machine, independent of the HP-Oracle Database Machine;
2) The HP-Oracle Database machine is a specific packaging of server and Exadata storage;
3) The size and price point of Exadata Storage server indicates it could reach into the mid-size business market;
4) Oracle still uses 'interesting' pricing.

My previous comment about not being applicable to my region was based on my reaction to the price and configuration of the full-blown HP-Oracle Database Machine. Not quite correct ...

From the announcement on Wednesday, and the side conversations, I managed to totally lose sight of point 1. Indeed, Oracle has announced they are in the disk storage business - a natural outgrowth of their foray into file systems and disk storage management with OCFS and ASM.

The size ranges for Exadata will indeed introduce some interesting issues. It is indeed valid for mid-range business and may even reach into the upper small-sized business. However, every mid-size company I deal with is looking at reducing the storage footprint, as well as reducing the number of storage vendors. Hardware sales is a different process, and requires a completely different sales relationship and entry point to the organization - Oracle really needs to look to third parties like Edmonton's Interdynamix if they want to be successful in that market.

My point about interesting pricing is taken from the referenced price list. Oracle sells the storage using either 300GB SAS drives or 1TB SATA drives. The amusing (or distressing) concern is that Oracle charges a simple hardware price for the 'shelf' including the 12 disk drives, but then has a software charge per disk in that shelf. Unless I totally misinterpret that pricing doc - possible, as I'm sitting in the airport waiting for my name to be called on standby.

Larry Ellison used his keynote to announce an Oracle-HP hardware solution to the problem of getting data quickly from database (disk) to the instance (memory). I'm sure I'll admire the technology under this, and the obvious place to look is Kevin Closson's discussion around this.

Like Tim Hall, I am underwhelmed by the announcement. I'm certain there is a use for this, but this is nearly irrelevant in the small to medium market - and in Canada, the bulk of the potential Oracle customers are in the small to medium business class.

Similarly underwhelming, I note that the conference seems to have emphasized everything but database. (As compared to previous years, I don;t remember being told what the portion of Oracle revenue comes from database.)

Indeed, in a separate briefing, we were told about middle tier enhancements that provide zero-latency and infinite scalability, making the 'unscalable and slow database' effectively obsolete. I'm waiting for the announcement of sub-zero response times and virtual persistence that does not need any data store at all.

I've been around databases since late 70s and started with Oracle database in 1984. One thing I've learned is that they get more complex as time goes on. Anything that reduces that complexity interests me. SO I decided to attend the Soup to Nuts presentation in Moscone South.

I've used Oracle*SDE and Designer, ERwin, and other ER modelling tools. These tools did not make life easier when doing the initial design. In fact, they often slowed me down, as I can usually stream-of-consciousness code faster than design and code. But nearly all (of my) code eventually needs upgrading or troubleshooting, and SOC coding is a royal pain to debug, since I probably can not remember how or why I did something. So I learned from experience that I should design first, then code.

Emphasis on 'should' - the sheer weight of most of the modeling tools encouraged a prototype first, or SOC programming, attitude.

SQLDeveloper, based on the JDeveloper's extensible framework, is an exciting product. Fairly easy to use, SQLDev is definitely in conflict with Oracle's traditional NUIs (Non-Intuitive User Interfaces).

In this session, we got a heads up for a graphical ER tool extension to SQL Developer, including relational and multi-dimensional modeling. With a distributable 'viewer', and eventually a database-based repository. Some subset of the demoed features should be in public beta 'Real Soon Now'.


When I worked for Oracle, a number of us were privileged to use the ARIA project built on an early internal release of HTML-DB. So when Oracle released HTML-DB as a 'feature' of Oracle8i that peaked my interest, especially as a possible replacement and consolidation for the myriad of small Access, FoxPro, DBase personal databases that was proliferating. Unfortunately, Portals were the flavour of the year, and it seemed that HTML-DB was sidetracked as the Oracle Portal took precedence.

Fortunately Oracle came to their senses and re-released HTML-DB, which has been upgraded and renamed to Application Express. This is another example of conflict with NUI standards as APEX is indeed quite usable. I have built a few small apps in Apex 3.1 and am quite pleased with the results, especially for small business and work group apps.

The SQLDeveloper extensions - such as those which understand Application Express and that provide ER modeling - have helped make SQL Developer one of my favorite database access tools in Oracle. Between SQL Developer and APEX, I suspect I could spend a lot of my life learning features and futures such as the ability to use the Oracle Forms XML definitions to initialize new applications, and unit testing made simple (with check-boxes to define limit testing), and ...

I'm looking forward to the day when SQL Developer includes extensions to administer Oracle Warehouse Builder.

For now, I'll be keeping a closer eye to Eddie Awad's blog at http://awads.net/wp/ and Sue Harper's at http://sueharper.blogspot.com

... and the planned schedule is definitely out the window. With some interesting results and inputs.

I've been using my iPod Touch to keep up with email and web access. My calendar, my schedule for Open World, my customers, even my web cam from home - all on the iPod. The network here is pretty loaded and things can be slow. So, based on some reading about iPod Touch performance challenges, last night I started the upgrade to my iPod Touch. Due to the hotel network, that aborted. This morning, I come to Moscone Center early to complete the install. As an official blogger, I have access to the Press Room and Blogger's Lounge, which is where I decided to do the upgrade. About 45 minutes before my first session for the day is to start.

What I did not realize - there was a press Q&A scheduled around Social CRM and the changes in CRM over the past several years, including the latest things introduced by Oracle. Of course my upgrade - with dire warnings about not unplugging before it's complete - is running during the Q&A. So I listened in.

Interesting topic, and I was surprised to find out how close the topic is to the heart of this techie. Social CRM, in a nutshell, is a simple expansion of the Birds of a Feather concept we all have used for ages - people like to deal with, socialize with, and trust, people who have similar interests. So why not use CRM-oriented data mining to help customers meet relevant customers, as well as help companies understandf what is indeed relevant to customers. I found this interesting because I am both a customer who loves to meet other like-minded customers to share ideas, and because I am a techie who may be asked to manage the the mining tools and the database from which this is mined. I suspect DBAs will be asked about this stuff in the near future.

After that session, I headed over to Marriott and enjoyed Tom Kyte's keynote. Tom's theme was one some of us are very familiar with - the best way to do anything in Oracle depends on the real question. As always, Tom's ideas got me to thinking, especially in two areas: today's best practices can easily become tomorrow's myths, so retest our facts frequently; and yesterday's myths could easily become today's best practices.

Tom's presentation fits in nicely with somethings I've blogged about and frequently presented about - ROT or Rules Of Thumb. Every Rule Of thumb is based on (often unstated) assumptions and when those assumptions are violated, the result is a pile of rot. The assumptions that forced us away from things last version might no longer be valid due to changes in technology. Or the assumptions that caused us to use certain techniques yesterday might no longer be valid - such as having few users, few schemas and relatively small data sets, potentially encouraging separation of index from data to simulate manual striping for performance ... as compared to ASM, logical volume management, disk striping and SAME invalidating that entirely in most situations.

It was certainly nice to see Tom again.

After Tom's session, I headed over to iDevelop Hands-On session for APEX. Due to a logistic mix-up during registation, I managed to lose my Develop track access and could not preregister. So I ended up in the stand-by line for the session. The cutoff to get was the young lady in front of me. So I wandered over to my second choice. a session on SQL Developer and Migration Workshop.

I'd seen the Migration Workbench back in 2001 and 2002. Recently a number of customers have indicated they might need consolidation from a number of different databases. Migration Workbench has finally found a good home under the SQL Developer umbrella. And the demos by Oracle, and the supporting presentation by Finra, certainly opened my eyes. Even more to go home and study. I hope someone get to writing an APress OAK Table book around SQL Developer soon.

After that, I headed over to the Moscone West demoground and got a lot more information about Beehive. I'm still trying to frame my own interpretation about Beehive, as compared to other Oracle products such as WebCenter and others. I need to digest this before I blog about it, but I am definitely looking at that product more seriously. Much more as time goes on, but for now I'd say Beehive is Oracle's only 'consolidated Collaboration Content Server', whereas WebCenter and Portal are 'content consolidators' which could also present Beehive content.


Still to come - something about the OTN Welcome party last night, and the OTN ACE get together tonight. After all, Oracle Open World is all about meeting people ... and regardless of how convenient it is, face to face is still the best form of Social CRM.

(Speaking of which ... where are you Hector Madrid?)

Dan Norris has a couple of tips for Open World attendees. With appropriate apologies, here is my paraphrase: wear comfortable shoes; drink lots (of water); prepare to pare your carried load.

I did just that. I carefully went through the schedule and decided what was most interesting or most important. Put that on my schedule. Signed up for the Information Overload DVD pack to make sure I get all the information I'm missing.

Well, like so many best laid plans of mice and men ... the schedule has gone out the window already. The news about Beehive interested me so much, I decided to visit the Beehive booth at the demo grounds. As a Collab Suite customer who prefers to run a Linux OpenSUSE/KDE desktop, I wanted to see what the future holds.

On the way, I ran into the WebCache group. Good news - they demoed filter rules for the cache. So in addition to LBR, we can look forward to intelligent request handling, including source IP blocking and request redirects. And it sounds like they will confirm to the Oracle management BLAF (Basic Look and Feel) when the admin is handled through the newer releases of Grid Control. From discussions with the booth teach, in the future it will hopefully be possible to assign admin for WebCache separately, which would be a bonus. Traditionally (in my geography) the App Server admin is defaulted to DBA or a general Web Server admin. This change means we could assign the cache admin to a network administrator, which might make more sense for some customers.

I finally worked my way to the Beehive booth, where I learned some exciting news - Beehive does not depend on Outlook. It works with Thunderbird, and some of the team apparently has been using Linux desktops and 'all sorts of front ends'. The only piece of the old Collab Suite still to come is the web conference - aka web desktop - and that should not be that far down the road.

Even though it's officially one-person company, collaboration is still important - CEO, accountant, legal, temps, customers all need access, and simple EMail and unified client OS and environment is simply not enough.

Time to start looking at Beehive seriously.

Lineups, lineups, all I want is lineups. To be expected! there are 43,000 people registered to attend. To put that into perspective, that's just a bit short of the size of my home town next to Edmonton ... all of us in the core of San Francisco.

Like last year, Judy Sims welcomed us to the opening keynote. She described some of the changes based on the feedback from last year. Wow - the improvements are amazing. Oracle really does listen, from balancing between greening the conference vs usability (conference book is about 1/2 the size and weight from last year ... saved 965 trees over last year) to dedicated exhibition hall time and more Unconference sessions.

Highlights from Charles Phillips' keynote: "A year of Innovation" "$3B investment in R&D" "50 acquisitions in 44 months" "84K employees" "Complete. Open. Integrated." "Being number 1 helps Oracle help us [customers] by being able to invest."

Keys in the Vertical Apps are: Define solution map by industry and buy/build to that map and then standardize the integration through Application Integration Architecture. Think "Packaged Applications of the 90s become Packaged Integrations of the new millennium"

Keys in the Horizontal apps (Fins, CRM) are: Get feedback from customer

Keys in Middleware: FMW 10gR3 & EPM 11gR1. Going forward, more integration with BEA. Announcing JDeveloper 11g, ADF 11g, TopLink 11g available this week. Announcing FMW on the Amazon Cloud. Announcing Beehive to replace(?) Collaboration Suite.

Beehive is a ground-up communication/coordination/collaboration server. (Collaboration Suite, in spite of it's tremendous promise, was one of the most difficult to set-up and administer products in the Oracle toolchest. Beehive is supposed to be pre-integrated.)

Beehive looks very interesting and should be extremely useful, especially when the desktop sharing capability is released. It includes automatic IPR and security, so deleting or removing access to a file will be enforced even for remote copies.

After the install and administer issues, the biggest headache I had with Collab Suite was the dependence on Microsoft product. The Charles/Chuck demo so far only shows using Microsoft Outlook as the client. If Oracle truly believes in Linux, they need to show support for Linux desktops - I run KDE and most classes I teach use gnome - so I'll be asking about that in the demogrounds.

The discussions around Database (new options, such as the "Times ten" cache), Infrastucture (innovation around Linux with BTRFS and CFS, VM and Enterprise Manager) flew by.

The final announcement is "My Oracle Support", which seems to be a Flash-based, Web 2.0 version of Metalink, is now available. Since this is personalized suupport, there should be a lot of interest in this area.

Seemingly in keeping with the theme of integration, NetApp's keynote is appended to the end of the opening. The theme of that presentation is 'innovation in tech' - very interesting discussion around technology innovation helping ROI. Key ideas: overprovisioning, deduplication, thin cloning. From a ROI perspective the topic of the presentation was interesting. From the number of people heading out during the talk, I note that Open World still cuts across many parts of the customer base - honestly, how many techs care about business cases.

Summary ... the obvious theme is 'progressive innovation'. (Which may not make for much spectacular splash.) The one take-away for me is it's time to look when I'll upgrade my Collab Suite licenses to Beehive.

Today was a day of product briefings. It was a long day starting with meeting fellow ACE Directors and getting some ideas of what is to come in the areas of database, app server, tools and even applications. One thing came through loud and clear - there will be some interesting announcements in all areas, many related to the recent BEA purchase.

Most of the announcements will end up with a strong ROI component. Going forward I think I'll be spending a fair amount of virtual ink looking at Return on Investment and why Admins (SysAdmins, DBAs, JEE Admins, etc.) should be interested in the topic.

Oracle released database patchset 11.1.0.7 last week. Note to self: look at the new graphical Explain Plan in depth. It promises to be very very important for performance analysis.

On a more fun note, I finally met face to face with a few of the many OTN heroes. After many pleasant discussions on OTN forums and email, and threats to get together for a glass of wine or two, I got to meet Nicolas Gasparato. And Rob van Wijk. And ... I stop there, or I'll have listed hundred of names by the end of the week.

Today was the first time Lewis Cunningham, Tim Hall, Mark Rittman, Eddie Awad, Brown Bradley, Arup Nanda and I could meet before our Birds of a Feather session (#S300480) on Thursday at 10:30. I am really looking forward to that.

Tomorrow will be a busy day!

Oracle's Open World is, like Oracle itself, big. And exciting.

And I'm here - again. My 3rd Open World as an independent. I can't remember how many I attended while at Oracle, DLGL or Nortel. (Perhaps I should set up a database - APEX should make it easy.)

This year I'll be blogging about my experience here. Hopefully several times a day.

First off, Kudos to the Open World registration team who made the arrangements to get me here. I arrived yesterday afternoon on a direct flight from Edmonton. The flight was pleasant and - surprise - the plane and the bags all arrived at the same time. Got to the hotel and the check-in process was flawless. (You would be surprised at the number of times I have glitches at hotel check-in.) Met with Dan Morgan (Morgan's Library at www.psoug.org) and a few more Oracle ACE Directors.

Took the bus from the Hilton over to the Moscone Center this morning to check in and get my registration package. So far everything looks just like it did last year. Same party tent, same registration process (but without the snags from last year), same location for the OTN Lounge, and the bookstore (which will probably get me to buy a lot of stuff, same as last year). So a lot is already familiar.

On the agenda for today - get my iPod tied in to the hotel network and the Oracle conference Wifi so I blog and get my emails without carrying the laptop. Attend some IOUG sessions. Meet with a lot of the ACEs and ACE Directors.

If you are here, check out the OTN lounge. I'll be there for a fair bit, and I hope to meet a number of people I've chatted with, emailed, and met on the Forums.

This promises to be fun ...

Just got back from the PSOUG-hosted training and OracleDays 2008. A great week - three days of training and two of conference and breakout session. As always, I caught up with old friends and met people who I'd only known by reputation, or had met electronically.

The one challenge with this kind of conference - and it'll be a nightmare at Oracle Open World - is deciding what to attend. I started with 2 days of intense discussion about indexes by Richard Foote, but had to pass on classes by Jeremiah Wilton (http://www.ora-600.net/), Kyle Hailey (http://www.perfvision.com/) and the dynamic duo of Cary Millsap and Karen Morton (http://method-r.com/).

Talk about flattery - one person admitted to thinking twice about my presentation on Oracle Spatial before coming to his senses and attending Tom Kyte's "Worst Practices" session. Can't blame him, as I would have loved to attend Tom's session myself.

Thursday and Friday were filled with keynotes and breakout sessions. As usual, the hot topic of the day is governance, but there were some interesting announcements by Pillar (ASM compatible storage) and IBM's z10 mainframe taking the cost effective Oracle-on-Linux discussion to the net level.

One Thursday and Friday I managed to attend sessions by Kyle and Jeremiah (but I collided with Richard's high level Index session). These guys have it together - I highly recommend listening to them if you get a chance.

Bottom line is a big thanks to the PSOUG, especially Dan Morgan and Jack and Chris, as well as the sponsors and speakers. I've already got this on my calendar for next year.

Over in the forums, one of the most frequent complaints by people who try to answer questions is around the lack of information about the Oracle product version and the operating system version and edition. This information is usually missing by people who want to learn Oracle by installing it on their home/school/laptop computers.

A general hint for all of you who want to learn by installing Oracle product on your computer ...

It may be a surprise that Microsoft has different versions and different editions of Windows. Each version has different internals. Each edition has different capabilities.

When Oracle programs are written and released, they expect certain internals (DLLs, registry layout, etc.) and certain capabilities (supporting applications, such as security administration)

If you try to install Oracle product on a Windows version that is too old or too new, Oracle may not be able to call the operating system properly. So installing Oracle 8i database 8.1.7 on Windows XP Professional may not work, and installing any Oracle database version lower than 10.2.0.3 on Vista will not work.

(All right, technically Express Edition is at version 10.2.0.1 - but it was modified to work with Vista and a lot of the incompatible features are not included in XE.)

If you try to install Oracle product on a Windows Edition that is too limited, you may encounter problems because of Windows capabilities being missing, turned off, or just being limited. So installing Oracle 9i or 10g Database on Windows XP Home may or may not work (or some aspects may not work) partially because some features require security settings that are not exposed in XP Home. This seems to be especially true of the Vista Home vs Vista Business editions.


Please mention the version & edition of Windows! (And the product, version and edition of Oracle!)

This blog is based on questions I have received, and seen on the Certification forum at http://forums.oracle.com

1) Where to find out about (exams, certification, requirements, etc.)

Go to http://education.oracle.com or http://otn.oracle.com and look for the Certification link. Check the menu bar on the right edge. Or (same place) click here

2) Problems with the certification process

If you have written the exams and done all the other things right, but still have not received your certification kit - look through the FAQ., You can find it under the Support menu on the certification page. If you have any otrher questions about the process - look there as well. If you honestly can't find the answer, then ask in the Oracle Forum for Certification at http://forums.oracle.com

3) Why Certify?
Two main reasons that I can come up with

1. prove to yourself and others that you understand the basics of the topic
2. help get a job

4) Is it worth it?

Yes.

The process of certification, when followed, forces a person to look at relevant material. Sometimes it is a review, but sometimes it is new to them. That is a good thing. And supports 'Why Certify' reason #1.

And No.

Unfortunately there are people who cheat. When cheaters get hired, their employer often gets cheated and is left with the wrong impression of the quality of certification. Then everyone who has certification is suspect. That invalidates 'Why Certify' reason #2 - for everyone.

And, (whether true or not is totally irrelevant and not something I will debate) there is a perception in some areas that vendor certifications are simply money-grabs. As far as I can tell, this perception crosses ALL vendor certifications.

5) Which certification should I get?

Only you can answer that. You need to assess whether you are an architect, a developer or an operations person.

• Database Administrators, App Server Administrators, System Administrators, Functional or Application administrators are involved in long term operations, often years at a time. They keep the machinery of business moving, and hopefully keep it oiled and running efficiently. Good administrators will keep up with technology changes but will mainly study and expand their knowledge of internals.
• Developers and Architects are involved in changing the direction of the business. Projects can be measured in days, weeks and months and these people specialize in change. Good developers and architects will learn how to introduce change more efficiently, but also need to learn how that change integrated and affects existing systems. A good knowledge of internals is important here as well.Reviewing the exam and certification requirements may help you decide.

6) I've made a decision. How do I get a job as a insert title here

First step is to be honest about your ability. An honestly achieved certificate will help you self-assess your ability.

Finding a fitting job may be tough. You may need to use the same research skills you learned in getting your certificate in finding an appropriate job. You need to find out which jobs are available - through contacts, friends, local user groups, news papers. Then you need to apply for those jobs, and tailor each application to explain why you are the best person for that specific job. Finally, if you don;t get the job, you should find out why and use that information to make the next application better.

7) Where do I get information, tests, books, brain dumps, and so on

First, lets be clear. Getting certified is not supposed to be easy. It is supposed to provide you with the knowledge that you will need to do your job professionally. If it was that easy, your job would not be worth that much.

And remember that cheaters who are caught will lose their certification and perhaps lose their chance at any certification in the industry. Using Brain Dumps is considered cheating. Using Gunners is considered cheating. Passing an exam based on purely memorized material without understanding the material is as bad as cheating in the long run.

Now that's out of the way, here are some ideas:

• You can get books related to nearly each exam. Oracle Press and Sybex are some of the better known publishers. You can find these books at many local bookstores as well as many online bookstores such as http://www.amazon.com If you use an online store, try searching for the exam number, such as 1Z0-001 as found on the site listed under the first question above.
• Join a local users group. Not only will that help you with getting a job, but many professionals are willing to lend or sell their study books.
• Get the exam requirements (see #1) and learn to search, especially in the online documentation at http://otn.oracle.com (see Documentation) or http://docs.oracle.com or http://tahiti.oracle.com
  
• Search in the forums. Go to the relevant forum (don't simply pick the first one available) and use the search capability. If you can't find anything ask for help understanding. Explain what you want to learn and explain what you currently understand. Ask for pointers in the documentation. Ask for additional reasons. (But search first ...)

Keep reminding yourself "If it was that easy, your job would not be worth that much."

8) The Hands-On Course is so expensive. Do I need to spend [ insert value here ]?

Basically, it's Oracle's certification process, and they require all of us to attend instructor-led course[s] before getting OCP, OCE or OCM certificates. (Upgrades are generally exempt.) In many ways, it is simply Oracle's way of ensuring we are exposed to a wide variety of information.

And I'm not going to debate the obvious responses about money grab ... There are many ways of meeting the requirement and some are not that expensive. Consider it a challenge and a sign of a serious OCP candidate to have met the hands-on requirement within budget.

There have been recent questions about where to find information about Oracle's XML implementation, and how to use XML DB


You might want to start the online tutorials. (http://www.oracle.com/technology/obe/start/index.html) Drill into the Database 10g tutorials and go to the Extended Data management ones at the end.

You also might want to start at the XML-DB portal to see whether they have any demos or samples. All product portals start at OTN (http://otn.oracle.com), go into the product family (Product [left edge] > Database), then into the feature set (Content Management sounds like a good guess) and finally to the component (XMLDB) and see whether there are any discussions, white papers (venter area) or samples and tutorials (right edge)

Or you might want to look at the XML technology portal to see whether they have any demos or samples. All technology portals start on OTN at http://otn.oracle.com, go to the Technology Centers (Technology [left edge]), select Technology header if the area is not immediately visible, go to the XML Tech Center, see if there are some discus edge)sion papers or Sample Code (right edge)

Barring that, you could use a web search for "load xml into oracle" and perhaps select the first link that pops up (Loading A Large Xml Document Into The Database)

Or you could go to a book store such as Amazon, search for "Oracle XML" and buy a book like
- "Oracle Database 10g XML & SQL: Design, Build, & Manage XML Applications in Java, C, C++, & PL/SQL (Osborne ORACLE Press Series) by Mark Scardina, Ben Chang, and Jinyu Wang (Paperback - May 31, 2004)"

or my favorite

- "Building Oracle XML Applications by Steve Muench (Paperback - Oct 2, 2000) - Illustrated"