Customer Reviews

Head First SQL: Your Brain on SQL -- A Learner's Guide

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Before I talk about Head First SQL, let me tell you about other database books I have used in the classroom. I teach an enterprise databases sequence (DBs I and II) at a tribal college in Montana. On the course evaluations for this sequence, students have a common complaint: "Liked the class. Hated the book.", "The book was painful to read.", "Please get a different book!"

Each year my colleagues and I are on the watch for a better, more engaging database book. We have tried three books over the past five years, but the difference between those books is like the difference between shades of grey. In the classroom, most of my time is spent mediating the daunting abstractness of those books or breaking down huge lumps of difficult technical material written in plodding and pedantic prose. This year a spot of color showed up: Head First SQL!

I discovered Head First SQL too late to use it as the primary text for my Fall quarter DBs class, but I liked it so much, I added it as an optional textbook for the quarter and told my students it would be the main textbook for the Winter quarter. I did so because the energy of the class was waning rapidly, and the book I had originally chosen was not helping. I needed to add some excitement to homework and lectures. Within two days of using Head First SQL, the classroom became a far more engaging environment.

I compiled this list for anyone interested in learning databases and SQL, especially anyone who teaches it.

Eleven Things I like about Head First SQL:

1. The book starts where my students start. The first questions my students have are questions of relevance: Why do I want to know this? What have I done before that's like this? What will this material add to my career and my life? Head First SQL starts by ushering the student through those questions: What is a database? Who cares about databases? What will a database do for me?

2. My students are able to read SQL, think SQL, and write SQL after the first chapter. Head First SQL starts students on the command-line, the same command-line professional database administrators use during 80-95% of their workday. My students start out with good command-line habits like using a DESCRIBE statement to view database structure and columns before writing a SELECT statement that references those columns.

3. The book invites my students to make mistakes and anticipates the most common mistakes I see students make. On quizzes, students who've dug into the book don't make those mistakes again.

4. The book's sequence of topics fits the way I teach and the way my students learn: queries come before design and theory. Head First SQL does not set out to be a comprehensive database design book, but it does an excellent job of immersing the learner in the critical thinking that goes into database design and table design strategy. I applaud Lynn Beighley and the Head First Team. They have laid an excellent foundation for the learner to smoothly transition into abstract database design concepts such as normalization, primary and foreign keys, entity-relationship diagrams (ERDs), and E.F. Codd's 12 principles of relational design.

5. Students don't read the book. They work the book. They play the book. They do the book.

6. Like Socrates, Head First SQL pushes my class and I to ask deeper questions about data, information, table design, normalization. Three different times during fall quarter, we had substantive arguments about which data types to use for certain columns. To hear my students using critical thinking and applying it to table design strategy is rewarding.

7. Like a guide, an outfitter, a trusted companion, HF SQL walks beside the student. The books I have used before talk down to students, talk over their heads, or just plain pontificate.

8. Theater in a database classroom? Yes. My students and I act out things like "Confessions of a NULL" -- fun, mysterious, memorable -- a great way to turn an abstract concept into a concrete and palpable one.

9. At conferences, committee meetings, training seminars, my colleagues and I talk about student engagement and the new "three Rs": rigor, relationships, and relevance. Using Head First SQL in my classroom changed my class noticeably, and I attribute that change to Head First's focus on those three Rs. My students started showing up early for class, spent more time in the lab outside of class, and performed far better on quizzes.

10. My quizzes and tests consist of sample tables and data. The open-ended questions on those tests ask students to write SQL to solve problems--a daunting task but the best way to assess whether students really "get" the concepts. In the past, students scores have ranged from 10% to 87%. A score of 92% was rare. A score of 95% almost unattainable. With Head First SQL, that range increased to between 70% and 98%. If that's not proof of Head First SQL's effectiveness, I don't know what is.

11. You will laugh your [body part here] off! And be warned: no matter what body part you substitute into the brackets, you will laugh several other body parts off as well.

I highly recommend this book to anyone teaching or learning SQL, relational database design, or MySQL.

I haven't met a Head First/Head Rush title I didn't like, and this one is no exception... Head First SQL: Your Brain on SQL -- A Learner's Guide by Lynn Beighley. It's perfect for someone diving into the world of relational databases for the first time, as well as those who don't do it often enough to feel comfortable with things like normalized forms and outer joins. And along the way, you'll have plenty of fun picking up the skills you lack/need to reinforce.

Contents:
Intro; Data and Tables - A Place for Everything; The SELECT Statement - Gifted Data Retrieval; DELETE and UPDATE - A Change Will Do You Good; Smart Table Design - Why Be Normal?; ALTER - Rewriting the Past; Advanced SELECT - Seeing Your Data With New Eyes; Multi-table Database Design - Outgrowing Your Table; Joins and Multi-table Operations - Can't We All Just Get Along?; Subqueries - Queries Within Queries; Outer Joins, Self Joins, and Unions - New Maneuvers; Constraints, Views, and Transactions - Too Many Cooks Spoil The Database; Security - Protecting Your Assets; The Top Ten Topics (We Didn't Cover); Try It Out For Yourself; All Your New SQL Tools

As with all Head First titles, Head First SQL sets out to engage all your senses during the learning process. Unusual diagrams, questions, exercises, and off-beat pictures are just some of the ways that the author works to grab your attention and force you down the path of learning (whether it feels like you're going down that path or not). The mixture of these techniques means that your mind doesn't really have a chance to drift off and start thinking about what you're going to have for dinner. It's this style that makes the Head First series the first one I'll recommend to people setting out to learn a new skill.

For those who are wondering, Head First SQL uses the free MySQL package for all the examples and exercises. It's not necessary to have some expensive relational database system already installed on your PC. So even if your SQL learning efforts are self-funded, the total outlay will pretty much be the cost of the book, and that's it. And given that SQL is a standard query language, much of what you learn will also transfer over to any other relational database system you end up using down the road, like Oracle or DB2.

Since I've done some SQL in the past, I found most of the value for myself located in the later chapters. Working with subqueries and more complex joins aren't things I do on a regular basis, so it's easy for me to forget the concepts. But a quick flip here, and it all starts coming back, much clearer than before.

There's a reason I rarely loan out my Head First titles... they often don't come back. This will be added to that lock-and-key section of my bookshelf that requires DNA samples before they leave the premises. :)

As a beginning/intermediate Ruby/Rails programmer I have been waiting for this book to fill in that big SQL hole in my knowledge base.

Even though Rails abstracts much of the underlying SQL code through its ORM, Head First SQL answers many questions I had about SQL in an entertaining way.

Before this book my SQL knowledge could be summed up in two lines.
mysqladmin -uroot create abc_development
and
localhost/phpmyadmin

During a 24 hour marathon session with lots of Red Bull and Coffee the book has switched on the big SQL light in my head now.

For this Ruby/Rails programmer chapter 7 on Multi-Table Database Design, and chapter 12 on Security was worth the price of admission alone.

The Author's implementation of the Head First style is entertaining enough to actually make Head First SQL an enjoyable thing to study rather than sitting on my shelf with the other 3 SQL books that I was hoping to learn through osmosis as they can be a bit dry.

Any book on SQL whose style and content makes it possible for me to read and reread in the last 24 hours deserves 5 Stars.

My first Head First book was Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML, and it was absolutely wonderful. Given that, I had very high hopes for Head First SQL as well, but I'm sad to say this book is very disappointing.

I have two main complaints: the explanations in the book, and the typos. First off, I already studied a little SQL on my own a few months ago, mainly using websites and online tutorials. It's a fairly easy language to learn so I got pretty deep into it. I think it is for that reason only that I am able to follow along so well in Head First SQL. What I mean is, it seems to me that very little explanation is actually going on in the book. I understand the Head First method of teaching, but that doesn't have to preclude *any* kind of explanation at all.

For the most part, the chapters in this book describe a bunch of different situations (Greg and his list of contacts, clowns traveling around town, donuts at different shops, etc.) and through these examples we are given a bunch of SQL queries. The problem is that only once or twice does the author actually stop to say "Ok, here is the structure of the SQL query we will use"...instead, she just throws a bunch of queries at us and I feel like I would be very lost if I hadn't already studied SQL a little bit previously.

Instead of saying something like "You type the SELECT keyword, followed by your table name, followed by....." she just gives us the statement fully written. The problem I see with this is that it doesn't teach us how to construct our own. Our only real option is to pattern our own queries based on this single example she gives, rather than to know how to compose our queries from the ground up. (Sort of the whole teach a man to fish metaphor.)

And as I mentioned, there are a ton of different examples she uses (contacts, clowns, donuts, movies, girl scouts, etc. etc.) that there is no consistency between the examples. Very early on we are encouraged to enter a bunch of data into our own SQL database on our computer, and you figure, Ok, we'll use this throughout the book to run tests on it. Nope, you'll hardly see this table again for a long time, so don't bother. What I liked about the HTML book was that the authors carried a project all the way through the book. Head First SQL does not have that consistency.

Finally, the typos in this book are atrocious. There are a lot of little typos in grammar, which are annoying and unprofessional, but forgivable because we all know well enough what was meant (e.g. "then then you type"...well, we all know that one of those "then"s isn't meant to be there). But what is worse and less forgivable are all the technical typos that actually make the examples and crossword puzzles wrong and non-workable. This is ridiculous.

There is a "thank you" in the beginning of the book that says without a certain editor's help, the book would have come out in 2008. After reading most of this book already, I truly believe it still wasn't ready to come and could have used a lot more proofreading. If I spot these errors just by my casual reading, then why can't the author and editors, whose job it is?

Something tells me that this book was rushed to be released in 2007, and it shows in the quality.

Probably the publisher changed the name after the book was written but before publication in order to reach a wider audience.

Still, I'm glad I bought "HeadFirst SQL" because it has allowed me to better understand outer joins, inner joins, natural joins, intersect, union, sub-selects, views, etc.

The book does not explain any of the differences between MySql and other databases such as Oracle, when it comes to generating keys for "inserts", using "create" statements, the syntax of the "alter" statement, the ability to use a "check" constraint, granting and revoking security, etc. Only MySql version 5 syntax is taught, and it is taught in very great detail.

As a developer who uses Oracle 10g, I found the first half of this book was barely worth skimming. Much of it is specific to MySql and would generate syntax errors if applied to an Oracle database. The 2nd half of the book however is worth reading carefully and even re-reading; it's fun to read and imparts a great deal of valuable information about the things I mentioned in the first paragraph.

In summary, the book is worth the money for people who already know a little SQL but want to understand much better how to write DML (data manipulation language). It is not helpful for non-MySql programmers who want to learn DDL (Data Definition Language)..

Post Script-- The single biggest improvement I would suggest for not only this book but all "Head First..." books is to add page numbers where related information can be found. It is very frustrating, for example, to try to do the quiz on page 463 on writing a specific SQL query-- the book does not show on page 463 what page to flip back to in order to see the actual table definitions-- it could be thirty, forty pages back or it could be a hundred pages back, there is no way of knowing.

This book, like the others in the series, is an impressive piece of work. SQL can be pretty dry, so spicing it up in using the Head First motif definitely pays off.
Even though I gave it 5 stars, I sometimes thought too many pages were spent (wasted?) injecting humor into the learning process. Simply stating facts is not necessarily a bad way to teach soemthing. O'Reilly's "Learning SQL" by Alan Beaulieu goes that route and does a wonderful job explaining SQL - and in far fewer pages. (Granted, Head First pages are anything but dense, so total page count can be misleading.)
My only other gripe is that indexing - which I consider to be pretty darn important - was relegated to 1/2 page of text in the "Leftovers" section.

I should probably mention up front that I am not really a member of the demographic that this book was written for (that being the fairly new students to relational database theory), but I liked this book nonetheless. What really endears the book to me, and in fact, the entire Head First series, is the geek humor that the author sprinkles liberally throughout the book. Wordplay, funny photo captions, and entertaining exercises abound to make sure that the difficult task of teaching something as dry as an introduction to SQL is as enjoyable and down-right entertaining as possible.

If you are familiar with other books in the Head First series, then you pretty much know what you are in for with this book. If you are not familiar with this series (and honestly, if not then why aren't you?) then you are in for somewhat of a different experience than your typical beginner level technical book. For starters, the book uses lots of visuals and graphics to explain things. If the topic is learning how a select statement works, then the author hits you with building a dating service to illustrate the points. If the difference between sub-selects and outer joins is the topic, then the author drags both out onto the metaphorical stage to have a debate over why you should use one or the other. All of these implements, from outlandish scenarios to anthropomorphic database constructs are cleverly woven together to make sure that the information the author is presenting sticks to your grey matter. If you do the many and varied exercises in each chapter, then you really can learn this stuff and have a fun time doing it.
The book doesn't assume that you have had any real experience with databases and it even has a chapter explaining why you would want to use a database in the first place. The content of the book also stays away from any database -specific information and sticks to generic SQL commonalities: selects, alter tables, updates, deletes, where-clauses, joins, sub-selects, aggregate functions, ordering, etc. Constraints, views, and some rudimentary security concerns are touched on, but not to any great degree.

The appendices are really a collection of esoteric topics that he author
calls `left-overs'. There is a quick section on PHP (which seems a little out of place in such a general SQL programming book), GUI tools for databases, a list of reserved words, some additional information on data types, etc. There is a larger section for how to download and install a MySQL database, which is as close as the book comes to endorsing one database vendor.

As with most books, there are a few minor things that bothered me about this book in particular, and about the Head First series as a whole. For starters, the pictures and glyphs that the book uses get somewhat redundant after the first few times that you see them. Chapter after chapter, you see the same actors in the same or slightly different poses. In many cases, the only difference seems to be the text in the dialog bubbles that are attached to the portraits. I joked with a colleague of mine that we should have a caption contest and write our own dialog for a good number of the examples in the book. This seems to be a systemic problem with the series itself rather than a problem with Head First SQL exclusively, because I own a number of the other books in the series and they also use many of the same graphics and photos and actors in those books. Perhaps, just perhaps, it is a fiendishly devised mnemonic device to see the same images time and time again, but it strikes me as a tad redundant and a little boring after seeing the same images used to explain different topics.

In the final analysis of the book, I have to recommend this book to anyone who may be just starting out on learning SQL programming. Don't expect this book to be the last book you will need to purchase on the subject if you are aiming to be a DBA, or even an enterprise developer, but it should definitely be the first one you buy.

I'm generally a "learn what I need to know when I need to know it" kind of web developer. Though I have had some experience with SQL, I've always felt a little frustrated that I sort of skipped learning the foundations of SQL and went hurtling straight on into the database deep end. I had heard great things about the Head First series so decided to finally spend some time with a SQL book. I love the book. On top of being very humorous and witty, it helped me understand concepts on a level that you just can't get from a resource-type book. I especially liked the section on table altering.

This book takes a not-too-difficult but oh-so-dry subject and actually makes it interesting. The Head First series has tackled subjects in a similar fashion - Java, HTML, and design patterns, for example. However, being the geek that I am I actually find these subjects interesting, but just needed some books where I could brush up quickly and easily. The subject of databases and SQL, however, is a subject where the reading material can easily made into a cure for insomnia. Not so in this case. The author gets this problem. In fact chapter one actually has as a goal "How do you trick your brain into thinking that your life actually depends on SQL?". The book is not just about writing new databases, but about maintaining and changing old ones. It also talks about working with multiple tables and how to connect those tables with diagrams that will stick with you. It shows you how to do this in a manner that is interesting with the series' usual crossword puzzles, fake interviews and conversations, and Q&A sessions. Even if you think you know SQL, I can't think of a better book for brushing up if you've been away from the subject for awhile. This is true not only because the book covers all of the basics and even some more advanced topics, but because if you need to get up to speed in a short period of time this is one of the few books on the subject that will not put you to sleep.

Before reading this book, I knew almost no SQL. Head First SQL was a very fun entry into the world of talking to tables. Despite my near complete ignorance, I was very quickly creating tables and extracting information from them. I found the explanations very clear and the examples entertaining. Once or twice an exercise would throw me for a loop; but there was enough information in the book to figure them out.

Perhaps most surprising to me was that this is not just a beginner's book. The last half of the book gets into some relatively complex topics. This was great. I'm generally not a big fan of "fun" textbooks, and part of that is because they often have a tone of talking down to the audience. This book did not do that at all.

I have recommended this book to anyone who's mentioned to me that they were interested in learning SQL.