This is the first book on Oracle 10g New Features that was out from Oracle Press. It only gives a condensed overview of the topic, so for OCP exam preparation or for a deeper coverage of the new features you should rather turn to Sam R. Alapati's book. I would recommend Freeman's book as a supplement to Alapati as it covers some features which are not part of the OCP exam. It also contains some very useful comments by Jonatan Lewis.

As usual for books like this the binding is so poor, that my copy started to fall apart after I read a few chapters.

I read this book in September 2004. Nothing really exciting about it. The book is just an overview of the New Features of Oracle 10g. It has certainly some useful information that you can also find in the Oracle Online Documentation. It is well-written and easy to follow. I have nothing against the book but I prefer using the Oracle Online Documentation that is more complete and accurate most of the time. I am glad I don't own a copy of this book otherwise it would have been a waste of money. The copy that I read was from the library. After all it is a good book to buy if you don't like to navigate through the OOD but keep in mind you will not find every thing about the new features in this book.
I give 4 stars.

Since I possess Mr. Freeman's previous book (Oracle9i New Features) I pretty much knew what to expect from his new title, Oracle 10g New Features; concise explanations of major new Oracle features on two hundred-plus pages, with more or less clear examples and short comments. On top of that, I found a good commentary by Jonathan Lewis throughout the book - they (authors) really fit together, like salt (Robert) and pepper (Jonathan). Sure, some new features are great and some (at least) looks good on paper - now, at this point, you'll usually find Jonathan comment on the topic with his reservation and/or recommendation about the feature or concept. Well-done Jonathan!
Is this book a complete guide to all Oracle10g new features? Of course not! Nevertheless, I'm afraid, that you don't have much of the choice either, since official new feature guide from Oracle is even skimpiness (on the other hand it's good for on-line searching, plus, it provides some information for developers that you'll not find in this book!). Don't know for any alternative book of the comparable size and topic at the time of writing this review.
It's true that a few times author "shamelessly" points out that the topic is out of the scope of the book and refer the reader to the Oracle documentation set. I don't take this as an excuse - it's by the 'design', you can't cover everything on 200+ pages. This book is not a tutorial, nor complete reference for *all* of the little tweaks coded in 10g - you'll have do dip in many other sources as well and on your own!
Who should read this book? If you're already familiar with Oracle 9i release hen this book is certainly a worthwhile investment, if you're searching for OCP 10g preparation guide, then continue searching, finally, if you're by some chance a complete Oracle newbie (DBA or developer) you probably already know by now that this is not the book to start with. Cheers!

Once again, Robert has published a book that is concise and essential to the early adopters of 10g. After reading Oracle's documentation, searching online, I still came across some undocumented major 'gotchas' in a new 10g install. Within the first 5 minutes of reading the book, I came across the main one...automatic statistics gathering.

It is not an in-depth exploration of 10g and it does not replace the standard documentation. However, it provides a quick reference to find the new features and decide if you need to explore more in-depth. After years of "new" books that are 90% old material with 10% direct-from-the-documentation info, it is refreshing to have a single book that we can use to rapidly locate the new features that are/are not important.

Once again, Robert has written an excellent, concise guide to the new features of 10g.

Freeman doesn't make technical things easy to understand, because there's hardly any technical matter in the book. Whenever the going gets tough, his excuse is 'not enough space, so please check the Oracle online documentation'.

I suppose it's good to have a compact list of areas which I now know have to be investigated, which is what this book provides. But it certainly doesn't do any of the investigative ground-work for you. And therefore it's certainly not worth the money I spent on it.