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36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Substantially more than a style guide., May 15, 2005
This review is from: Joe Celko's SQL Programming Style (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems) (Paperback)
Style guides tend to be heuristics of understanding a hard-to-define -- consequently hard to defend -- criteria that will make your design effective. Strunk's "Elements of Style" would be an exemplary definition of a style guide. With all style guides, however, you can follow them religiously and still end up with an execrable book or living room.
Mr. Celko spends remarkably little time with style formatting, although he does delineate what constitutes readable and maintainable SQL code. Where the book finds its utmost utility is in the consistent and increasing reinforcement of thinking in sets. SQL is not about transforming data (although you can); SQL is about properly storing data, and then being able to find it again. Simple enough, but all-too-easy to get wrong.
The first two chapters talk about naming and actual SQL style. This is primarily what I'd expected, but Mr. Celko isn't about to let me off that easily. In discussing naming, he brings international standards into the mix. Right away, the standard of my existing SQL code falls away under this level of scrutiny. Throughout the book, Mr. Celko is bringing up a data discipine I have long-suspected existed but honestly never sought to embrace. Why should I develop a data model that adheres to standards, if mine will be the only model in the company even attempting it?
Therein lays the problem with this book: it can make a reader uncomfortable. Mr. Celko is writing about SQL and, more importantly, the data it will describe and manipulate, in far more depth and with far more rigor than I've seen elsewhere. He has an entire chapter on encoding data, another on scales used to measure data. Nowhere else will such treatment be gathered in one place, in the context of using SQL. Moreover, his conclusions are backed by years of experience *and* impressive references to back him. The bibliography will surely cause me to invest in yet more books.
Of course, the book can be dry in spots. Encoding data properly is important, but it's not as entertaining as seeing his effective SQL examples put to work. I think the balance between showing data as it is displayed and explaining the theory of the encoding (or modeling, or selection) is tricky to achieve, but I don't believe it ever broke down. The *density* of the book is striking; going into a 195-page book, you don't readily expect to re-read the same page three times to grasp something, but you must. At some point in the book, you will encounter an aspect of SQL development you've never come close to mastering, and it will give you pause. Take notes, work it out, and dig deeper. It'll be worth it.
Could I recommend this to newcomers to SQL programming? Qualified yes; you need to discipline yourself to work through much of it if you lack the experience in what's being presented. The book would make an excellent two-semester course in database development, one I suspect many would enjoy more than the typical relational database classes taught today.
Mr. Celko has again delivered an essential text on SQL, and it would serve as a springboard for a thorough introduction to all things data.
Fred
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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A very valuable SQL-style guide, August 30, 2005
This review is from: Joe Celko's SQL Programming Style (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems) (Paperback)
This is not the first book I have read from Joe Celko. I appreciate very much his clear and concise style and the examples he provides, always meaningful and to the point. This book is not the exception and it completely fulfilled my expectations. In a very scholarly way (rule / rationale / examples / exceptions) Mr. Celko covers all the aspects that I could expect from a "programming style" book: layout, naming, SQL do's and don'ts, guidelines about views, triggers, stored-procedures, checks on columns, etc. He also provides a list of resources regarding standards (Military, ANSI, ISO, Industry) that I found very useful. I can highly recommend this book to any experienced or inexperienced person that deals with SQL (developer, DBA or even a data modeler)
My only criticism would be regarding a few unkind remarks he wrote about "newbies". I do not deny the value of showing examples of bad SQL coding followed by a better way of doing it, but there are ways to present them. I wouldn't be happy to see my name in a sentence like "As an example of a horrible misuse of SQL, [name of the guilty] posted a procedure ...".
It was also not very nice the way in which Mr. Celko introduced the Basic Software Engineering section: "With some embarrassment, I will now give what should have been covered in a freshman course". If a "newbie" is reading this book to gain some knowledge, he or she doesn't deserve the criticism. They know they are inexperienced and they are trying to improve. And the sloppy programmers, who may deserve such a criticism, they are not going to read a book like this anyway. Don't you think?
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent book in excellent style, April 15, 2006
This review is from: Joe Celko's SQL Programming Style (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems) (Paperback)
Too many database books are written by developers whose expertise is OOP and not SQL. While I don't agree with Mr. Celko on every point, keep in mind that he was on the SQL Standards Committee for 10 years. Even if you don't agree with him on every point, his level of expertise is undeniable - unless, perhaps, the questioner can provide evidence of greater knowledge and expertise.
This book is to SQL grammar and style as "The Elements of Style" by Strunk and White are to English grammar and style. Mr. Celko explains, in terms that should be easily understood, why SQL should be written in standard SQL while still allowing that there can be exceptions just as verbal communications, in any language, should follow the standard grammar of the language unless there is good reason to slip into a localized dialect.
Where one reviewer rated the book with 1 star because that reviewer disagrees with Mr. Celko on a single point of database design, his antagonistic remarks have nothing to do with the point or the value of this book.
As the editorial review states, this book is not for beginners. If you have been programming SQL for a year or more and you want to fine tune the quality of your work, this work is something you should surely read.
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