Customer Reviews

Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes (3rd Edition)

5 star:		(51)
4 star:		(25)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

All lessons provide code snippets for examples as well as the corresponding output. Unfortunately there is no way to have a frame of reference since there is no information or illustration of the input. It's a great book, but as many other reviews stated, it is much more suited as a reference book. All in all I would say it is DEFINITELY worth the price, but personally it left me wanting to buy another SQL book, I'm thinking something from Joes 2 Pros.

I purchased this book to refresh myself on the basics of SQL. I must say that I am thoroughly impressed with the simplicity of the material. It is a good book if you ever wanted to try learning SQL or need a refresher. The downloadable material along with the step-by-step instructions make this book a much better tutor than the SQL For Dummies.

This booklet gives you instructions on how to run different SQL commands, and it does so by just throwing you the rigid command lines. You want run a JOIN script? here's the syntax, go for it.
It doesn't even give you a scenario and explain to you WHY the script should be written in that way.

I would recommand Joes 2 Pros' Beginner SQL: http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-SQL-Joes-Pros-Hands-/dp/143925317X/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1286860133&sr=1-4

The title is "Teach yourself SOL in 10 minutes" so you should know that this is just a starting book and not a complete explanation of the language. And as a starting book this book is great! If you want to learn how to build multiuser relational databases then I would look for a book that doesn't have "in 10 minutes" in the title, but if your looking to get the jist of SQL then this book is for you. I bought the ebook edition and was able to download it instantly. The author includes links to 2 free database utility's, one of which he wrote, that are worth the price of the ebook alone!

Update (Dec 1, '06): updates marked with >>>

-don't know which program you will be using for SQL and have no knowledge of SQL commands, this book is directed at you and you should get it.

-know which program you will be using, get a book on your specific program, because there is enough variation between the programs that another book will serve you much better.
>>>I think I will change this recommendation -- if you don't know SQL, consider this book regardless of which program you are working with.

-are familiar with a few commands in SQL, look for a different book because you will probably breeze through this book and not gain nearly as much as if your time was spent reading something else.

I was in the first category and found this book to be an excellent introduction. With the exception of 2-3 of the 18 lessons, this book is quite clear...those 2-3 lessons just take a bit more time getting familiar with the concepts. You won't find yourself breezing through the chapters in 10 minutes each, with the possible exception of the first 5 or so, but the lessons do only take about 20 minutes on average and are straight-forward.
>>>The book teaches by example, which I'm typically not a big fan of, but this book pulled it off well.

So, if you are brand new to SQL and don't know what program you will be using, buy this book and take an hour each day for a week to read it.
>>>If you are new to SQL, consider buying this book, but... you may also benefit from the free tutorial on w3schools . com, which is found under the PHP section. Having now done some MySQL for a website, I can certainly say this book is useful and I gained from its pages but I would also recommend the free tutorial before purchasing (both because it is free and because it is actually a very good tutorial on both PHP and MySQL).

I bought Learning SQL (O'Reilly) mistakenly thinking that it might be a good book for a novice. Teach Yourself SQL is a good book for a novice - a really good book. This book is a series of lessons that will get you up and running right away. I found I retained more with Forta's lesson style over the reference book style. A great book to start SQL.

Why 4 1/2 stars? This book covers most of the major DBMS: MYSQL, SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, etc. It is amazing that one book can effectively address so many programs. But as I went further into the book I found myself getting stuck in sections that did not apply to the DBMS I was using (MYSQL). I eventually started using MySQL Crash Course (Sams Teach Yourself in 10 Minutes) which is a very similar, but an even better book. If you are thinking of learning SQL on MYSQL, go get the Crash Course.

I like this book, I've read it about 3 times. I typed in most of the examples in MS Access 2000, and most of them worked, except those involving transactions, views and cursors. The examples using SELECT queries (including the FROM, WHERE, GROUP BY, HAVING, ORDER BY clauses), IN keyword, UNION keyword, BETWEEN keyword, subqueries, aggregate functions, INSERT, UPDATE, and CREATE TABLE, DELETE TABLE, and DROP TABLE worked just fine. Sometimes I had to tweak them, but there were no major hassles in getting them to work.

What I did not like about the book is that it did not properly identify some concepts as being non-ANSI SQL concepts. For example, triggers, savepoints, and indices are not a part of ANSI SQL. The book did not seem to properly identify them as such. To identify what is not a part of ANSI SQL, I recommend SQL Instant Reference, by Martin Grubner. It is also a small book, great at identifying the full syntax of SQL statements, but short on examples.

SAMS Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes does not give a comprehensive overview of ANSI SQL, but I was never under the impression that it would. But it does give a great start at using SQL, and focuses on the workhorse of SQL - the SELECT statement. I heartily recommend it for the beginner.

This book was perfect for someone, like myself, who was looking for a guide to SQL. Not database management, theories, or histories, just SQL and how to use it to retrieve data from a database. It's an excellent reference to have around now too.

This book is a well-written, well-organized, concise introduction to SQL. Each of the 22 lessons takes about 10 minutes to complete. The same files are used throughout and are available from the author's Web site. Using these files and the author's numerous examples, one can learn SQL step-by-step as painlessly as possible.

There is one deficiency, though. Appendix E lists all SQL Reserved Words, but doesn't provide the exact syntax to use (for different DBMS's) or examples. Correcting this would subtantially increase the size of the book but would be extremely useful for reference.

SQL in 10 minutes?? ......I thought this guy was kidding. He wasn't. The main reason why I couldn't get a job was because I didn't know SQL, within one hour I read the book, tried all the examples, wrote SQL on my resume, applied for a job and got the job the next day requiring SQL experience :)

This language is so easy to learn, it feels more like an application than a programming language. It seems as though the whole language is really just 3 words, select, from & where, although I'm still new and theres probably a tonne more but I didn't need to know that to get the job.

Compare it to learning c,c++, Fortran and other languages for the first time where you learn to define variables, learn the functions, test cases, inputs, outputs, etc, etc. SQL you pretty much type in the inputs and you receive the outputs...its a really intuitive language, anyone can start learning within minutes. Highly recommend this book, its also probably the best quick reference out there if you need to solve a particular problem.