What you need for this book

In order to get the most out of this book it is helpful to have a copy of P6 at hand so that you may try out the concepts for yourself. It is also very helpful to have one or more actual projects to work with, so that you can apply what you learn as you read along.

The easiest way to obtain P6 is to visit edelivery.oracle.com. If you do not already have an Oracle account, go ahead and make one, as it costs nothing and gives you access to a wide variety of resources, such as forums.oracle.com and support.oracle.com, which contains a rich variety of knowledge articles and allows you to communicate with other Primavera users and the Oracle support team.

Once you have logged-in and read and accepted the licensing terms and restrictions, you may search for and download many Oracle products. Choose the Product Pack called Primavera Applications and then choose the proper platform that you need.

Note that the screen will show many Primavera products besides P6, and will show many versions of P6 as well. By default, the products are arranged by release number. It is helpful to click on the Updated column twice so that the products are sorted by the one most recently updated. In the following screenshot we have highlighted P6 Enterprise version 8.2:

P6 Professional is in general much easier to install on your own system. P6 Enterprise (the web version) will require a greater deal of technical know-how, as you will be installing WebLogic and BI Publisher as well as P6.

If your company already has an installation of P6, then see if you can have someone create a database instance just for you to work with as you go through the book. This will allow you to try out all of the functionality of P6 without the risk of altering the production-level system.