Customer Reviews

Developing Time-Oriented Database Applications in SQL (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

People seem to be selling used copies of this book for quite a bit ($125+) but you can get a PDF of the book for free from the author:

http://www.cs.arizona.edu/people/rts/tdbbook.pdf

Thanks to the author for providing this resource!

Professor Snodgrass has effectively communicated temporal data to me with this top-notch book. I have been designing systems for 25+ years and, for me, this book ranks with Donald Knuth's, "Art of Programming: Fundamental Algorithms (first edition)" and Charles Petzold's "Programming Windows", for its impact, in particular on my thinking process in software development. Every system I review, every table I design, every object that I design be considered differently than before I read this book.

His analogies are "country", but important. It took three settings of an hour each on 10 pages until the concepts really sank in. I have seen these constructs in Data Warehouses, but now I see a future for these in transactional systems.

Every time based system will eventually incorporate these concepts (and new SQL tools) - In particular all accounting systems including banking, brokerage (especially portfolio management), tax accounting.

For example, right now we are working on a system to track and manage vendor problems in a "just in time" manufacturing environment. If our tables had been designed with these temporal concepts, we would be able to more effectively communicate trends to our management users.

Those people who are familiar with these concepts may find it boring, but for those of us learning, I say thank you!

I've used this book while working as the lead data architect on several large database projects, and it's been a lifesaver. It brings rigor and discipline to a very difficult area for SQL (true relational) databases: handling, reporting on, and storing the changing [versions of] data over time.

The concepts are themselves quite difficult and challenging, and I would be loathe to even attempt to build a system tracking changing data over time without this book's priceless assistance.

Another reviewer, an instructor, didn't like the book: it is not a tutorial and may be hard to use, understand, or follow if you are not already working on a problem that this book can help you solve.

But if you are involved in creating (say) an insurance application that must handle retroactivity, or a financial system that must be able to re-create an earlier financial report and explain why today's version of Q2 is different from yesterday's, then you NEED this book.

The one-of-a-kind book is a practical research on how the real world changes over time effect the viability of database design.
The author provides many solutions to real-life problems and (most important!) 'gotchas' of the these solutions. The examples are provided for many popular DBMSs(from MS Access to Oracle).
The reader benefits greatly from the superb organization of material, clear language and good illustrations.
The sidebar notes on history of time-measuring devices provide a nice break from the 'heavy-duty' stuff.
I bought my copy two month ago and it has already became a one of the best-thumbed books on my professional shelf.

This is a book EVERY programmer that deals with databases should read. It explains the evils of NULL date/datetimes and how to properly optimize a database design for real-world queries.

Follows several applications through the evolution of time-senstive queries, clearly distinguishing the concepts of "current time", "effective time" and "transaction time", which trip up developers over and over.

(This review refers to the on-line version of the book, as distributed by the author)

Hardly an easy read and quite long, but very much worth the trouble to read end-to-end. I actually wished it were longer, since some aspects are bypassed entirely (e.g. sequenced GROUP BY, maintaining referential integrity during DELETEs). It was an eye-opener.

Do expect to spend a lot of time trying things out yourselves, and look out for small mistakes in the SQL code examples throughout.

I have spent quite a bit of time working on databases that involve time issues. I've looked at much of the published material available, including Date's recent book, dozens of articles, conference proceedings, etc. Overall this is the best available.

After I absorbed a lot of this book, I felt there could have been a more concise version of the concepts. Maybe someone will come out with a concise, well illustrated 100 pp. tutorial that is dramatically better, but it hasn't happened yet. Even though there are a lot of code samples, there is still a BIG leap to get to a production system. It is too bad that something like SQL/Temporal won't be coming out as a standard anytime soon. However, with conventional SQL you can still go a long way in developing databases just by using the Bitemporal design principles.

Overall, if you work with time history, etc. in databases, you can't afford to not be studying this book.

This is my first Amazon review. Most of the time I wouldn't even bother thinking about writing a review but this book is different. For anybody involved in the design of databases with temporal functionality (i.e. involved in the design of real-life databases, period!!), it is a must read. I have been designing systems for over 20 years and first worked on temporal functionality back in the early nineties, hand-rolling our own temporal referential integrity. Great fun! I thought that I had a good grasp of the domain - well, I do, but in this book, Snodgrass has comprehensively categorised and organised the domain of temporal data into an accessible, practical, and complete set. He does so in a manner that is very readable using real-world examples. I wish I had come across it long ago. However, even though 12 years old, it is still highly relevant and will continue to be so. It has clarified my understanding and given me new perspectives on past projects as well as opening my eyes up to new possibilities. Top class all round.

One aspect to the business of temporal data that is not treated in this book (and wouldn't be treated here as the book stands) but is relevant is the interaction between the system and the user. Dealing with temporal data as a designer is a bit of a head-wrecker, pity the poor user! A book outlining best user interface practices for managing, presenting, visualising, expressing the sometimes convoluted concepts in plain domain specific language would be an excellent development to this excellent foundation.

Not much to add to the reviewers below, except perhaps that the book is friendly, chatty (it sports a goodly number of interesting trivia on rather rarely covered topics like calendars), and -- most of all -- it is exceptionally timely and focused on the right problem: developing temporal applications with the SQL products we have NOW (that is, the products that do not have any built-in support for temporality).

This is in contrast with the recently growing body of literature dealing with the same or very similar topic, spacio-temporal data, but from the DBMS developer point of view, that is, how data-server programs are to be designed if they are intrinsically to support the concept of temporality -- which is, no doubt, interesting and in general enlightening, but at the same time academic, not immediately practical for applications developers: we do not have such products yet. Snodgrass's book shows how to deal with temporality with your regular SQL server product (in fact, it covers a number of the most widely used ones: servers like MS or Sybase SQL Server, DB2, Oracle, even MS Access). The book is clearly written, masterfully paced (not too fast, not too slow, even despite the numerous sidebars with historical info and other curiosities that this uncommon topic is so rich in), and supports the textual explanations with a large amount of sample code.

The bottom line: recommended w/o reservations. This is a necessary, timely book that is also well done: a rare combination. That it is out of print is absurd, but not all is lost: the author very generously made it avaliable for download (in PDF format) on his site. A worthwhile read! Worthwhile even if you don't specifically need it right now (or, more likely, _think_ you don't -- because you don't know what it's about). Read it simply to clarify the concepts of temporality, for, most likely, you _are_ already dealing with them no matter what your specific applications are; you just don't know it yet. Read this book for the sake of mental clarity: once you do, I bet it will affect what you do with your databases no matter what it happens to be. A very, very good book.

I enjoyed reading this book more than most technical books, because the author maintains a very pleasant style and adds interesting anecdotes. It isn't presented as a theoretical book, but presents the basic issues with case studies and a review of SQL3 proposed extensions.

The book is about time-based (really temporal) databases. A temporal database is a fully relational database with some additional features for handling time issues. This is in contrast to object-oriented databases, which are not really very relational at all. The temporal issues can be addressed with existing relational products (Oracle, SQL Server, DB2), though they could be addressed with less effort once new versions of existing products are produced that support SQL3.

The author addresses the temporal additions planned for SQL3 while presenting case studies and explanations as to why these additions would be helpful. There are about a dozen additions, depending on how you count things, ranging from new data types (time with time zone) to new predicates (overlaps).

Even though I have worked with temporal database issues for many years, it was helpful to review the issues from someone else's perspective. Dr. Snodgrass obviously has been working with temporal databases far longer than I have and he has that grasp of the material that comes from mastering a subject. Yet he presents the material in a very readable and understandable way. I found the book both useful and entertaining.