Customer Reviews

The Essence of SQL : A Guide to Learning Most of SQL in the Least Amount of Time

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is a great alternative to the SQL "Bibles" out there. The book takes a very practical, top-down look on how SQL works, by taking a core set of common types questions asked of relational databases, and shows you how to do it. The most likely use of this book is to read it the whole way through, in sort of a text-book fashion.

To fully understand this book you need a fairly good grounding in set theory and programming. If you have this background and are looking for a quick into to SQL, this book is excellent. It is a very short book and a very quick read. It is not a SQL reference book. In a few hours it will give you a very good understanding of SQL.

Ideal for programmers who need to quickly learn SQL. Not so good for those with a fair amount of SQL experience or those looking for in-depth information.

I had to buy a second copy of this book becuase people borrow it so often that I can never find it.

A very elegantly written (how often do you get to use the term "disambiguate) book that manages to deliver on the promise in the title. Recommend only for those who have more than a passing familiarity with SQL.

I have been teaching computer topics for a little over 5 years. I find that the easiest things for beginners to grasp is the syntax, or "how to write the code".

With a language like SQL that is so concise the real hurdle most people run into is "how do I form the question?"

You can learn how to write a simple select statement in a few minutes. This book discusses the more advanced topic of how to take English questions and convert them to SQL queries.

It is an essay on how to use SQL to ask questions with the language. How do I ask a type 2 query (simple sub-queries) or a Type 3 query (correlated sub-queries) or how do I even know what kind of question am I asking.

I use this book in my SQL course and I bring it out after we have slogged through all the syntax.

Ask someone who has just finished a "Learn SQL in 21 days" type book and they can tell you how to write a correlated sub-query. Ask them how do I write an SQL statement that finds only those students who have taken CS120 and CS240 but no other class and hear the roaring silence.

That is what this book does. It discusses how to ask the questions, once you know the language.

This is definetly a great start if you are just beginning to learn SQL. The book goes through many examples but doesn't have any examples to be worked out by the readers and then checked with the book, so when you buy this book, start looking for another book. This book is not a for dummies book, so be prepared.

One thing that I didn't like about the authors approach is that he used very mathematical words (such as boolean, cross-product, etc.) This was fine for me but I think some readers (especially those not familiar with those high order mathematical terms) will get confused. He might have needed to add a couple of pages to the book so that he could explain these terms with just a few (extra) words, or ommited the words entirely.

I probably would have given the book 4.5 stars but wasn't available. Yes the book is very small and I read it in 3 days after long days at work but it was worth the money since it took from zero to comfortable with SQL statments.

It takes a whole lot more insight to write concise, thoughtful books like this than the encyclopedias that often fill bookstore shelves.

As English is my second language, I found this book very concise and easy to read. Though it is not a complete SQL guide, it do cover the most practical and fundamental parts of SQL. It is a small and thin book. It starts by a list of standard questions and walk you through the corresponding SQL expressions and explanations in only 119 pages. After reading this book, I found myself become more comprehensive and faster to read other complete SQL handbooks. I think this book is an effcient and effective SQL entrance and a fine teaching reference as well.

This is the best material on SQL I've ever seen. Excellent.

My co-worker bought this book and wonder how to return it to Amazon. This book is not worth the buck if you're looking for writing rather complex SQL. It only shows the VERY basic of SQL. Easy to read, but not much content. Don't waste your time here. Go find some other book!

By far the best book for learning SQL fast that I have read. I have recommended it to many software developers who understand computer languages and want to learn this one. Wonderfully thin and straight-forward, it does not focus on the boring details of SQL syntax, but on how you write various types of queries using this language. Best value I have found to date in an introductory SQL book.