Customer Reviews

SQL from the Ground Up

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

 

 

After reading just 3 chapters of this text, I was forced to put it to rest. The number of errors, particularly in the examples, were frustrating and confusing. I am an IT professional. My company would never accept work that wasn't as error-free as possible. Obviously, the editors are not placed under similar expectations.

I can't believe this was the required textbook for my "Introduction to Oracle" class. Luckily I had taken an earlier class that covered the basics of SQL, because this book has so many errors in the examples that it can be very confusing. I'm very disappointed in the quality of the proof-reading of this text.

This book does not properly match my requirements because I had expected a more advanced book on SQL before I bought this one but it still is an OK book to have. (the title says 'from the group UP' so I thought that it would take me up to be an expert SQL scriptor) It gives me lots of basic SQL commands such as SELECT, INSERT, CREATE TABLE, etc.. but not complex commands to use in real situations. So if you are an SQL novice, this book will do but if you are looking for SQL book for using as a referrence book, try to find another book.

I just bought the book 2 days ago and I am going bring it back to the bookstore and have my money refund ! I first looked at the chapter on transactions and although I read the material on isolation levels several times, I was unable to understand it. Fortunately I had on hand an article on transactions in Java where I could understand the concept ! I also tried to understand the way intermediate save points have to be used. I then decided this book was not really usable and would better go back to its original shelf !

This book starts from scratch(from the ground up) and takes you to creating useful products. Uses tables(and data)from the free Oracle sample database(which was an education in itself loading on my machine using Oracle's documentation!) also has downloadable examples from Osborne Press and Microsoft.

I bought this book hoping for a complete, concise, and clear treatment of SQL.

Unfortunately, what I got was a confusing, disorganized mess of a book whose examples are full of obvious typos (eg, they use inconsistent names for the same database columns within a single example -- didn't anyone proofread this book?), and whose explanations often do more harm than good.

To take just one example: early in the book there's a 15 line SQL query full of operators the reader has not yet been introduced to, whose explanation points out that "this example includes a left outer join". Fair enough, but this is within the first 40 pages or so of the book, and the author hasn't actually told the reader what a left outer join *is*, or why the reader should care.

The careless construction and copy-editing of this book makes it more confusing than enlightening. My copy will be going back to the bookstore.

This bought sounds looks like it has a lot to offer, but once I got into it I discovered that there is no real substance at all. She works thru some examples, but never tells you what the tables look like or how to populate them! It's near impossible to follow the examples, and the book is full of typos. There's better stuff out there.

This book looked rather comprehensive when I flipped through it in the bookstore, but I was unpleasantly surprised to discover how much it lacked when I tried to use it at work the next day. None of the items I looked up were covered in any reasonable amount of detail, and many items weren't covered at all. For example, I found nothing regarding how to insert data from one table into another table! I had to borrow a co-workers book instead. This book is going back to the store today!

This book is good for someone new. However, there are several typos in the book that may make you go crazy if you don't realize they are just typos.

The book really deserve zero stars. The main theme of this book is ERRORS. The book also has poor explanations. Personal Oracle 8 takes about 8 hours to download if all you have is a 56k modem. I cancelled the download when I saw that it was going to take that long. This was around page 100 and at which time I decided to give up on the book and put it on sale and sold it for 10 bucks. I considered myself lucky. I thought it was going to serve me as a nice review, but that was a bad idea. I should have stuck to my copy of Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 24 hrs.