My 3rd Book is now officially released

Today 12th September (2016) is the official release date of my 3rd book.

The title of the books is 'Oracle R Enterprise'. Make sure to check it out on Amazon.

It has been a busy 17 months, as you may have noticed that I had another book released a few weeks ago. Check it out here.

Yes, I was working on two books at the same time.

Yes, that was a lot of work, and looking back on it was a lot of fun too.

This new book (Oracle R Enterprise) is a good companion for my first book (Predictive Analytics using Oracle Data Miner), as I now have a book for each of the components of the Oracle Advanced Analytics option.

Here is what is on the back cover of the book.

"Effectively manage your enterprise’s big data and keep complex processes running smoothly using the hands-on information contained in this Oracle Press guide. Oracle R Enterprise: Harnessing the Power of R in Oracle Database shows, step-by-step, how to create and execute large-scale predictive analytics and maintain superior performance. Discover how to explore and prepare your data, accurately model business processes, generate sophisticated graphics, and write and deploy powerful scripts. You will also find out how to effectively incorporate Oracle R Enterprise features in APEX applications, OBIEE dashboards, and Apache Hadoop systems. Learn to: • Install, configure, and administer Oracle R Enterprise • Establish connections and move data to the database • Create Oracle R Enterprise packages and functions • Use the R language to work with data in Oracle Database • Build models using ODM, ORE, and other algorithms • Develop and deploy R scripts and use the R script repository • Execute embedded R scripts and employ ORE SQL API functions • Map and manipulate data using Oracle R Advanced Analytics for Hadoop • Use ORE in Oracle Data Miner, OBIEE, and other applications ... "

This books is ideally suited to people who are starting out with Oracle R Enterprise (ORE) or have some experience with using it, and want to see what you can do with it and how it can be used with other products like APEX, OBIEE, Hadoop and Spark. Yes I touch on these in the book. This book may also be of interest for those who are working with the products I've just listed and want to see how to use ORE.

If you are at Oracle Open World (OOW) next week make sure to check out the book in the Oracle Book Store, and if you buy a copy try to track me down to get me to sign it. The best way to do this is to contact me on Twitter, leave a message at the Oracle Press stand, or you will find me hanging out at the OTN Lounge.

A special thanks to my technical editor, Mark Hornick, who is a Director of Oracle Advanced Analytics Product Management, for Oracle's R Technologies.

Here are quotes from some people about the book.

The book ‘Oracle R Enterprise’, written by Brendan Tierney, is a valuable resource for any data scientist who wants to use the R language with the Oracle Database. It demonstrates very well the many features of Oracle R Enterprise, from performing simple analytics to utilising the many performance features of the Oracle Database, allowing you to work with all your datasets - Big or small. Additionally the book demonstrates how you can use the power of the R language with the SQL language as well as with other Oracle products including APEX and OBIEE, as well as Hadoop and Spark.

- John Donnelly - Regional Director, Oracle Ireland

The new book by Brendan Tierney, Oracle ACE Director, on Oracle R Enterprise details how users can gain maximal value out of the Oracle Database’s tight integration with the popular open source R statistical programming language. The author guides the R community into how they can, through the ease and familiarity of R, tap into the power of the Oracle Database Enterprise Edition with its Oracle Advanced Analytics Option or the Oracle Database Cloud Service. Brendan, an expert in this field, clearly articulates how to get quickly started and provides extensive “how to” examples and R scripts. Readers of the book can learn how they can access data directly in the Database, eliminate data movement while exploiting the openness and flexibility of R. Readers can then tap into the scalability and security of SQL of the Oracle Database and leverage Oracle’s proprietary, parallelized in-database machine learning algorithms and Oracle R Enterprise’s R “push down” to SQL functions. Read this book and learn how to leverage R and reduce model development and enterprise model deployment from days/weeks to minutes/hours!

-Charlie Berger

Sr. Director Product Management, Oracle Advanced Analytics and Machine Learning

"Brendan Tierney conveys very clearly all the aspects required for a successful Data Scientist that wants to work with large Databases and large Big Data clusters. It contains a great articulation of all aspects related to building and deploying Machine Learning algorithms in an Oracle Database environment with an overview on the algorithms on Hadoop clusters, as well as the integration with Business Intelligence dashboards and Applications. This is an essential reference for anyone in the Data Science field today working with Oracle Databases.

Marcos Arancibia, Product Manager, Oracle Data Science.

My 2nd Book: is now available: Real World SQL and PL/SQL

It has been a busy 12 month. In addition to the day jobs, I've also been busy writing. (More news on this in a couple of weeks!)

Today is a major milestone as my second book is officially released and available in print and ebook formats.

The tile of the book is 'Real Word SQL and PL/SQL: Advice from the Experts'. Check it out on Amazon.

Now that sounds like a very fancy title, but it isn't meant to be. This book is written by 5 people (including me), who are all Oracle ACE Directors, who all have 20+ years of experience, each, of working with the Oracle Database, and we all love sharing our knowledge. My co-authors are Arup Nanda, Heli Helskyaho, Martin Widlake and Alex Nuitjen. It was a pleasure working with you.

I haven't seen a physical copy of the book yet !!! Yes the book is released and I haven't held it in my hands. Although I have seen pictures of it that other people have taken. There was a delay in sending out the author copies of the book, but as of this morning my books are sitting in Stansted Airport and should be making their way to Ireland today. So fingers crossed I'll have them tomorrow. I'll update this blog post with a picture when I have them. UPDATE: They finally arrived at 13:25 on the 22nd August.

In addition to the 5 authors we also had Chet Justice (Oraclenerd), and Oracle ACE Director, as the technical editor. We also had Tim Hall, Oracle ACE Director, wrote a foreword for us.

To give you some background to the book and why we wrote it, here is an extract from the start of the book, where I describe how the idea for this book came about and the aim of the book.

"While attempting to give you an idea into our original thinking behind the need for this book and why we wanted to write it, . the words of Rod Stewart’s song ‘Sailing’ keeps popping into my mind. These are ‘We are sailing, we are sailing, home again 'cross the sea’. This is because the idea for this book was born on a boat. Some call it a ship. Some call it a cruise ship. Whatever you want to call it, this book was born at the OUG Norway conference in March 2015. What makes the OUG Norway conference special is that it is held on a cruise ship that goes between Oslo in Norway to Kiel in Germany and back again. This means as a speaker and conference attendee you are ‘trapped’ on the cruise ship for 2 days filled with presentations, workshops, discussions and idea sharing for the Oracle community.

It was during this conference that Heli and Brendan got talking about their books. Heli had just published her Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler book and Brendan had published his book on Oracle Data Miner the previous year. Whilst they were discussing their experiences of writing and sharing their knowledge and how much they enjoyed this,they both recognized that there are a lot of books for the people starting out in their Oracle career and then there are lots of books on specialized topics. What was missing were books that covered the middle group. A question they kept on asking but struggled to answer was, ‘after reading the introductory books, what book would they read next before getting onto the specialized books?’ This was particularly true of SQL and PL/SQL.

They also felt that something that was missing from many books, especially introductory ones, was the “Why and How” of doing things in certain ways that comes from experience. It is all well and good knowing the syntax of commands and the options, but what takes people from understanding a language to being productive in using it is that real-world derived knowledge that comes from using it for real tasks. It would be great to share some of that experience.

Then over breakfast on the final day of the OUG Norway conference, as the cruise ship was sailing through the fjorrd and around the islands that lead back to Oslo, Heli and Brendan finally agreed that this book should happen. They then listed the type of content they thought would be in such a book and who are the recognized experts (or super heroes) for these topics. This list of experts was very easy to come up with and the writing team of Oracle ACE Directors was formed, consisting of Arup Nanda, Martin Widlake and Alex Nuijten, along with Heli Helskyaho and Brendan Tierney. The author team then got to work defining the chapters and their contents. Using their combined 120+ years of SQL and PL/SQL experience they finally came up with scope and content for the book at Oracle Open World.

..."

As you can see, this book was 17 months in the making. This consisted of 4 months of proposal writing, research and refinement, 8 months of writing, 3 months of editing and 2 months for production of book.

Yes it takes a lot of time and commitment. We all finished our last tasks and final edits on the book back in early June. Since then the book has been sent for printing, converted into an ebook, books shipped to Oracle Press warehouse, then shipped to Amazon and other book sellers. Today it is finally available officially.

(when I say officially, it seems that Amazon has shipped some pre-ordered books a week ago)

If you are at Oracle Open World (OOW) in September make sure to check out the book in the Oracle Book Store, and if you buy a copy try to track us down to get us to sign it. The best way to do this is to contact us on Twitter, leave a message at the Oracle Press stand, or you will find us hanging out at the OTN Lounge.