As a byproduct of its careful focus, the book is tiny. It almost fits in a shirt pocket, and is about as thick as a standard pencil. A typical entry documents a single command (there are separate entries for different operating systems when commands differ), and includes a bit of text followed by the relevant command and a listing of typical output. Utility scripts with Oracle relevance are listed with minimal comments. This isn't traditional man-page-style Unix documentation, but rather advice on how to accomplish various Oracle goals inside Unix. Most readers will likely turn first to the index to find the entries that they need. --David Wall
Topics covered: Making Oracle database management systems run well under HP-UX, Sun Solaris, IBM AIX, IRIX, and DEC Unix. Ways of examining and adjusting Oracle's use of processes, memory, processor cycles, files, disk resources, and other aspects of the Unix system. Information is presented in recipes, in type-this-to-do-that format.