Customer Reviews

The Ingres Papers: Anatomy of a Relational Database System (Addison-Wesley Series in Computer Science)

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This book is essentially a collection of research papers from the 1970s and early 1980s, each focusing on an aspect of the pioneering University INGRES database project at the University of California at Berkeley. Although it doesn't have a huge amount to offer practitioners these days, the book has three main points of value to academics and the historically-minded. First, the "glue" connected the papers is the usual opinionated Stonebraker commentary. This has reasonable entertainment value. Second, Rowe and Stonebraker tell the technical story of their 1980 startup, Relational Technology. Third, some of the research papers have become practically impossible to find as university libraries continue to throw out older and less-circulated conference proceedings.

Yes, it is true, it is older in terms of technical literature. Still, for those who want to be a DBA or work in the database area, I would make it required reading. After twenty five years of IT work, all involving databases in one way or another, I can say that most people I have encountered do not think about the work they do. They just try to move along in their DBA role with no big picture understanding of anything, and no appreciation for theory into practice. This book gives this kind of knowledge. It covers many topics which all DBAs should be familiar with but sadly are not. All in all, very worth its price and the time you spend reading it. It is a thinkers book and we need more thinkers in the business. I have a BA in CompSci and I understood about 3/4 of the book in detail. There were a couple of chapters that went beyond my level in some regards.

As a remark on its age, the concepts in this book have been made real to the industry over time since it was first published. Consider the case in point that this book gives a detailed example of as called in the book "hypothetical relations". If you think this is "OLD TECHNOLOGY" or "PIE IN THE SKY" then you should look at the ORACLE database (not INGRES), as hypothetical relations are the foundation of what we know in the Oracle world as "Oracle Workspace Manager". Many in the Oracle community know what Workspace Manager is, but few know how it actually works. This book gives you the theory behind it albeit with a different name. Oracle does not tell these kinds of details about their products. Hmm... not so outdated maybe.

Hail Flavius!