A Guide to SQL

The book had no markings. It was in great condition and arrived in good timing!!

My comments are about the 6th and 7th editions of the book. It was the required text for a college course about Structured Query Language. The school offered other courses about database theory and design. The book only covers SQL. It is not about database theory or database design. The book assumes the reader either understands database theory or is taking a database concepts course and is required to also learn SQL. In the first chapter it presents 2 (6th) or 3 (7th) databases that are used throughout the book to teach SQL. The chapters are relatively short but are packed with material and have summaries, lists of key terms, review questions and plenty of exercises (for each database). We were required to work through all the end-of-chapter sections. I believe you can best learn sql by using it and the chapter exercises allow you to do that. The database we used was MS Access and the sample databases were already set up for us. The book comments on differences in SQL syntax between various popular databases. I was surprised to read some of the negative comments made by other posters although some of them were about earlier editions. Don't buy this book expecting to learn database theory or design; it has a narrow focus, as the title suggests: SQL. I still refer back to this book, among others, when I have a question about SQL syntax.

I have used several editions of this book with nary a complaint from students. The book uses real, honest-to-goodness, standard SQL. SQL is a standardized language, but the 900 lb. gorillas in the market like Oracle and Microsoft refuse to follow the standard. If you use some flavor of Microsoft Jet SQL or Oracle, this book will be of use, but will not teach you all of the "extensions" that the big SQL players have made in their proprietary versions of SQL. Still, pretty much all of the code in this book will run, even from the bone-headed SQL prompt in Microsoft Access! As other reviewers have noted, this is not a general DBMS book, although good design principles are followed. If you want a relatively short and comprehensive introduction to DBMS, I recommend Pratt and Adamski's _Concepts of Database Management_ 6th ed. There are many outstanding DBMS books out there, but Pratt and Adamski is the arguably the briefest. The chapters on normalization are very good--very practical with very little set theory. I regard database design as little more than applied set theory, and if your set theory is weak, Pratt and Adamski is the book for you.

Covers standard SQL commands and also includes equivalent commands for Access (and other common DBM systems). Information is presented clearly and there are many examples.