Object-Oriented Database Design Clearly Explained

"Object Oriented Database Design" is a book for beginners and, as far as I have been able to investigate, it is a perfect walkthrough along the background of object structures. Figures, exemples, syntax of codes and clear explanations lead the learner through theory towards practice. Exemples are often very nice.

Needing a database backend for one of my projects but not quite up to speed on the relational database model, I stopped by the campus library and found this book. I plowed through the first half of the book in an afternoon, and started writing code for PostgreSQL the next day.This book is short, to the point, and fairly shallow. A great starting place if you want just enough background to understand a database product's documentation. This is definitely not an in-depth SQL reference, but many of those details vary between implementations anyway.The book could be improved by replacing the chapter on CASE tools with more material on advanced SQL hacking.

I really like the way this book steps through the progression from relational databases to hybrid databases to fully object-oriented databases. This is not a book on designing object-oriented applications (of which there are many good titles). It is about designing databases. The content is excellent, and is, indeed, "clearly explained." In my opinion, it is most appropriate for people with some experience with entity-relationship diagrams, and some programming background. The references cited are the "masters." This book does not waste the reader's time with silly humor or unnecessary material.I hope there will be a second edition. If there is, the glossary might be somewhat expanded. I would like additional unified modeling language (UML) diagrams. I would like an explicit explanation of "impedience mismatch" between object-oriented applications and relational databases, although this may be slightly out of scope.This is a unique and valuable book. Being a teacher, I see its value in the classroom. It is a practical book which surely is also of immediate value to progressive database administrators and programmers who are helping bring object technology into their organizations. It is an excellent textbook for courses on object-oriented database design. I plan to use it as a second textbook for a general course on databases. I think it would also be ideal as a second textbook for courses in object-oriented systems design which include database design.Bruce Neubauer -- Pittsburg State University