Database Systems: An Application Oriented Approach, Complete Version

This book is the required text for a graduate course in database systems. We covered about 80% of in the class. At well over 1000 pages, the book has a lot of information. The chapters are written well. A running case study is presented throughout this book as an example. Most of the chapters are easy to read although it does get dry at times. Some of the chapters were very complex and highly theoretical especially the one on normalization (chapter 6) which perhaps only academics will care to know enough about. Chapters on XML, database indices, query processing, distributed databases and data mining are excellent. This isn't a book you can read in a weekend. It will take a few months to read and assimilate all the concepts presented here but after you are done, you will have a very strong background in this area. Overall I enjoyed the book very much. A broad spectrum of topics with enough detail is provided. Highly recommended for novices and intermediate users alike.

The book goes into detail about several topics without being too advanced to understand. It constitues a decent reference to introductory Database Theory, but should not be used as a reference for more advanced topics or SQL queries themselves on working systems.

As a not-very-academic veteran software developer, I enjoyed this book immensely. In a clear and breezy manner it provides the academic underpinnings of what I've been doing in the corporate world for so long. And the breadth. In addition to the basics, topics such as ER Design, Object Databases, XML, Web Services and Data Mining are covered. Highly recommended.