Learning SQL (Paperback)

by Alan Beaulieu (Author)
Key Phrases: avail balance, bank schema, pending balance, Oracle Database, Paula Roberts, Susan Hawthorne (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"If you have been avoiding coming to grips with SQL, or if you feel that you are only just coping with putting together queries and designing tables, then this is the book you need to understand what is going on." - Mike James, VSJ, July/August 2006

Product Description
SQL (Structured Query Language) is a standard programming language for generating, manipulating, and retrieving information from a relational database. If you're working with a relational database--whether you're writing applications, performing administrative tasks, or generating reports--you need to know how to interact with your data. Even if you are using a tool that generates SQL for you, such as a reporting tool, there may still be cases where you need to bypass the automatic generation feature and write your own SQL statements.

To help you attain this fundamental SQL knowledge, look to "Learning SQL," an introductory guide to SQL, designed primarily for developers just cutting their teeth on the language.

"Learning SQL" moves you quickly through the basics and then on to some of the more commonly used advanced features. Among the topics discussed:

The history of the computerized database SQL Data Statements--those used to create, manipulate, and retrieve data stored in your database; example statements include select, update, insert, and delete SQL Schema Statements--those used to create database objects, such as tables, indexes, and constraints How data sets can interact with queries The importance of subqueries Data conversion and manipulation via SQL's built-in functions How conditional logic can be used in Data Statements

Best of all, "Learning SQL" talks to you in a real-world manner, discussing various platform differences that you're likely to encounter and offering a series of chapter exercises that walk you through the learning process. Whenever possible, the book sticks to the features included in the ANSI SQL standards. This means you'll be able to apply what you learn to any of several different databases; the book covers MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, and Oracle Database, but the features and syntax should apply just as well (perhaps with some tweaking) to IBM DB2, Sybase Adaptive Server, and PostgreSQL.

Put the power and flexibility of SQL to work. With "Learning SQL" you can master this important skill and know that the SQL statements you write are indeed correct.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 306 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc.; 1 edition (August 22, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596007272
• ISBN-13: 978-0596007270
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #108,854 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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• This item is part of The O'Reilly Learning Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

51 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars grammar-based approach can't get off the ground, August 28, 2006

By	Matthew J. Garland (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

It seems like most of the people writing reviews for this book already know databases to some degree. I didn't, so I'd like to share my experience.

This book takes an old-school, grammatical approach to the SQL language, grouping related commands into chapters, then explaining each, one by one.

This makes the first part of the book exhilarating. You go to the O'Reilly website and download a database to work on, and immediately you are querying, updating, etc, using the examples from the book. SQL at first seems refreshingly direct and powerful compared to the (OO) programming languages I know.

However, the 'a command followed by long verbal explanation" approach completely falls apart when the content goes even a little deeper. For me, the book took a nosedive at the first "Joins" chapter, and never recovered.

It was then I realized that I had not yet firmly grasped what a 'foreign key" was, so it was hard to get my head around the the idea of a join.

A simple graph would have helped at many points, but there are no graphs.

Nor are the code examples embedded in meaningful contexts or test cases. Indeed, the reasons for writing the code are almost in every case revealed AFTER the code is shown ("in that last query, the intent was..."), and the code is never commented, which makes it harder to understand and retain. And without any context, it is difficult to understand WHY to use one command over another. It seems like you can skin a cat a million ways in SQL--so why prefer one kind of filtering to another? Performance, readability, what?

I guess it sounds like I just wanted this book to be a 'Head First'-type book, and that's true. But even on its own terms, this book is frustrating. Its pure emphasis on the language somehow skips syntax, and the long verbal explanations are constantly seesawing away from themselves ("as we will see", "as we have seen").

I've finished the book and feel reasonably confident about using SQL now. So this book is serviceable...but unnecessarily painful, too.

46 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Programmers, please read!, October 7, 2005

By	Jack D. Herrington "engineer and author" (Silicon Valley, CA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

If you're writing any type of database driven code and you think that you don't need to understand SQL, read this book. You do need to understand it, and this book teaches it very well.

Man, I'm so tired of cleaning up bad SQL code. Code that makes hundreds of queries when one would suffice. Or tables that have no primary keys. Or code that never makes use of joins. SQL is not horrible. It's worth understanding and knowing how to write well.

This book is well written, well illustrated, and makes learning SQL as pain-free as it can be. Please, please, please, read this book.

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beats "SQL for Dummies" Hands Down, March 4, 2006

By	Larry (Somerville, MA) - See all my reviews

Like everyone else, I'm pressed for time. It's all I can do to keep up with Java, let alone related incidental technologies such as SQL, JavaScript, HTML, Ant, etc. But as one reviewer pointed out: make no mistake, you need to know SQL. And if you don't (hell, even if you do), this is just a flat-out good book to have and read. I had previously purchased and read "SQL for Dummies", but threw that book out when I got this one. (To be honest, it wasn't just this book that made me toss the "Dummies" book; I never really liked it to begin with.)
I like the way "Learning SQL" is written. Sure, facts are presented, but the author does a masterful job of telling you how and why those facts exist. In addition, the conversational tone of the book proceeds along the path you'd expect from a real conversation: from the simpler to the more complex, in a logical and sensical path. (Okay, so most conversations don't fall into that category. But this book sure does, so do yourself a favor and buy it!)
Oh, and one more thing related to being pressed for time: it's not the technical-typical 700+ pages, it's just a few hundred.