Database Management Systems Package Ed E-Text (Website) [Hardcover]

Ramakrishnan (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 740 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies; 2nd edition (June 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0072465352
• ISBN-13: 978-0072465358
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.3 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,242,595 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great, practical book on basic DB internals, April 3, 2006

By 

Paul Rogers (Fremont, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Database Management Systems Package Ed E-Text (Website) (Hardcover)

A few years back, I created a special-purpose, custom-built, high-speed relational DBMS using just this book and general computer science knowledge. Darn thing blew the socks off more general purpose solutions and was very stable even after a crash. The book covers access methods, indexing, logging, crash recovery and other basics.

If you want to know how database systems are built at the nuts & bolts level, this is for you. If you want to know how to use a database system, or how to design an application database then this is not your book; choose a "user-level" book instead. If you want to know about the latest research directions, then pass on this one as well since it only covers the tried & true basics.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Awkward and difficult to read, November 29, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Database Management Systems Package Ed E-Text (Website) (Hardcover)

I also had to buy this book because it was required for a course I was taking. This book is probably one of the worst text books I have ever read. Mostly, I found the author's style of writing awkward and difficult to read, hence making learning new concepts unecessarily effortful. The author seems to know what he is talking about, but has a poor way of explaining it. I would not recommend this book.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good overall review, but leaves loose ends, July 20, 2002

By 

Matthew Buckley-Golder "amazon_womble" (Toronto, ON Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Database Management Systems Package Ed E-Text (Website) (Hardcover)

Overall, I like this book. It is well presented and formatted and a better introduction to the concepts than computer-science oriented books like the C.J. Date book. The book is fairly modular and provides chapter references to potentially prerequisite topics that may reside earlier or later in the book.

One problem I did have is that there are sometimes some loose ends left hanging. I realize that not everything can be covered, but sometimes a concept will be mentioned and it is stated that a full discussion is out of scope for the book. Fair enough, but the explanation that is given of the concept is sometimes not sufficient to make any discussion of it worth the effort. This is a minor problem, though, because most of the topics are covered with sufficient detail to get a high-level understanding.