Relational Database Design Clearly Explained

I'll preface my review by saying that my database skills are at least intermediate, if not advanced. I started years ago by learning MS Access 97, and then some VBA. I moved on to SQL Server 7 and then 2000 for a couple years. I had not touched a database in at least a year when I was commissioned for a project that required more tables and relationships than I had previously done. That's when I bought this book. I already knew concepts of normalization and how to write a SQL statement. This book gave me a fantastic review of good database design, without being specific to any one software approach. It taught me an accepted standard for drawing an entity relationship (ER) diagram and started me thinking about more complex relationships in a new way. As a review, it was a quick read. I'm not sure it would help someone who's been doing databases for 10 years full-time. Nor do I think it is the absolute best beginner's text. However for someone at a beginning to intermediate level, this book may provide a much-needed review with several nuggets of new information.

My background is in non-relational databases and supporting them. This book explains the relational database theory in such simple, clear terms, that it was easy to relate the non-relational database that I'm familiar with relational database theory. This book was very objective about explaining the fundamentals of relational database theory without a lot of mis-directed 'fluff' or 'clutter' to boost the page count. I felt that the examples were great too.With all due respect to the efforts of the authors, editors, and publishers, the book did have some typographical errors in key places which was very confusing. There were only a handfull of them. I'd suggest if you find yourself TOO confused (especially when reading about one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many relationships), it's a clue that you just ran across a typo.

"~I bought this book along with 3 other database titles because I needed some quick help in modeling a database. I am a relative newcomer to this field, but I've read a few other books and can pick up things pretty quickly. I was a little concerned about the price for 286-page book, but I found myself grateful for the lack of time-wasting filler. is on SQL; that is not quite accurate. The second half of the book, entitled "Practice" is mostly taken up by 3 detailed real world examples, starting with a description of the businesses to be databased, and ending with ER diagrams and SQL database definitions. The first 2 chapters of "Practice" review SQL and the capabilities of CASE tools, but most of it is taken up by the three examples. The examples are very helpful because they run into some of the same modeling problems I have"~ been stumped by, and they introduce things not covered in the Theory part of the book, such as 3-way composite entities and multiple relationship between the same 2 entities. diagrams with explanation. Harrington's book sort of splits the difference between these two other books, but all are helpful.

I bought this book because I needed to understand relational data base design in a hurry. I was not able to put it down because its clear discriptions and interesting easily understood examples hooked me into the early morning hours. The author anticipated, then answered every mental question I had, right on cue. This book is like reading the clearest lecture notes from a great database design college course. For example, her lesson on normalization levels was not only easy to understand but fun to read! Yes, this book was a joy, not a task to read and understand. Enjoy!