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Title: SQL Queries for Mere Mortals: A Hands-On Guide to Data Manipulation in SQL by Michael J. Hernandez, John L. Viescas ISBN: 0-201-43336-2 Publisher: Pearson Educational Pub. Date: 21 August, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $49.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.28 (32 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: An Invaluable Resource
Comment: I sat down with this book as I tried to bring myself up to speed on working with database design and operation. After reading the "companion" Database Design for Mere Mortals, I tackled SQL Queries for Mere Mortals. While some of the beginning was redundant, it popped me into buiding SQL queries with a ton of examples and hands on exercises. Slowly building your knowledge and allowing you to see how the pieces can stand alone or interlock in the syntax, you are given more and more specific examples to help understand the concept.
Is it exhaustive? No. Is it a quick reference? Not really. What it is though is a good reference piece when I'm trying to remember how do write sytnax for a specific query, showing me a real life example, instead of a list of just possible uses. Many references simply give you the generic terms built into one example statement like "Outer Join Table1, Table2 on Field1 [Order by]...." Instead, this book shows you using databases you are introduced to so you see the syntax in action. Since I don't use SQL every day, it's nice to go here to jump start my brain after some time also. A great book for someone getting into database queries, or who works with them occasionally and needs a guide.
Rating: 5
Summary: Examples, Examples, and More Examples
Comment: "SQL Queries for Mere Mortals" focuses on how to think about and create SQL queries to answer real-world questions. It covers the database design issues you need to understand in order to write SQL queries, but it doesn't try to be a design book. It doesn't talk about creating a database, inserting, updating, deleting data, or about performance tuning. In short, this book lives up to its title and focuses only on SQL queries.
This book is full of examples of how to take questions and turn them into SQL queries, plus explanations of why and when to use the various SQL capabilities. The examples focus on standard SQL. While your SQL implementation may support slightly different syntax, the examples provided in the book serve as a useful base for understanding the power and complexity of SQL.
If you are just learning SQL, or you have been using it for a while and need to enhance your SQL skills, you will find this book very useful.
Rating: 4
Summary: Very good but flawed
Comment: First, I have to say that I liked this book very much. It is clear and to the point. The examples and excercises are also extremely helpful. I particularly like the fact that they include several very different sorts of databases on the attached CD ROM.
There are two things that keep me from giving it the full five stars. The first problem is that the autthors introduce a method for converting requests in english into SQL queries that is next to useless. It starts with a request for data (in english) and proceeds to a "translation" into something like SQL. Finally you are supposed to convert the translation into valid SQL by "cleaning it up" (i.e. deleting extraneous words). However, there is no explanation of how you get from the request to the "translation". Luckily this method is not necessary to follow the otherwise well thought out explanations in the book.
The second problem is that the excercises in the book don't work out the way they are supposed to (i.e. the number of rows returned by the query is not always the number of rows they tell you it is supposed to return). This is because the excercise databases are slightly different than the solution databases. This caused me plenty of headaches trying to debug my SQL until I discovered the problem.
Even with these problems, this is the best beginners book on the subject I've yet come across.
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Title: Database Design for Mere Mortals: A Hands-On Guide to Relational Database Design, Second Edition by Michael J. Hernandez ISBN: 0201752840 Publisher: Addison-Wesley Pub Co Pub. Date: 05 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $49.99 |
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Title: Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes (2nd Edition) by Ben Forta ISBN: 0672321289 Publisher: Sams Pub. Date: 26 April, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.99 |
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Title: The Practical SQL Handbook: Using Structured Query Language (3rd Edition) by Judith S. Bowman, Sandra L. Emerson, Marcy Darnovsky ISBN: 0201447878 Publisher: Addison-Wesley Pub Co Pub. Date: 14 October, 1996 List Price(USD): $42.95 |
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Title: SQL in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference by Kevin Kline ISBN: 1565927443 Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates Pub. Date: 01 December, 2000 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: SQL for Dummies by Allen G. Taylor ISBN: 0764540750 Publisher: For Dummies Pub. Date: 28 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.99 |
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