Database in Depth: Relational Theory for Practitioners Review

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(More customer reviews)Over the last week or so, I've been reading C. J. Date's book Database In Depth - Relational Theory for Practitioners (O'Reilly). While it's a well-done title, it's the type of book I have a hard time reading...
Contents:
Introduction; Relations Versus Types; Tuples And Relations; Relation Variables; Relational Algebra; Integrity Constraints; Database Design Theory; What Is The Relational Model?; A Little Bit Of Logic; Suggestions For Further Reading; Index
C. J. Date, along with E. F. Codd (the acknowledged "father" of relational database theory), are probably the two most influential individuals in this field. Much of what we know and practice in today's RDBMS packages all goes back to the work these two have done. Rather than write a textbook style discussion of the finer points of database theory, Date has used this book to update some of his thinking and to consolidate a number of his talks and writings of late. For serious students of relational database concepts, I'd consider this the latest "must read" to keep up with current thinking by one of the masters.
Having said that, I had a hard time slogging through the material. I tend to gravitate to technical reading material that is practical and understandable. Debates over finer points of arcane minutia will cause me to zone out quickly. Unfortunately, I felt that way through a lot of this book. There is a lot of solid technical material here, and it's definitely geared towards serious readers. Date doesn't have a lot of kind words to say about how database vendors have implemented the relational model, nor does he feel SQL is a good thing. I, on the other hand, figure the packages are what they are, and you had better learn to use them to create the systems needed by your customers. That's probably why I'm a developer and not a system architect. Reading a number of pages on why Date and Codd disagree on whether nulls are valid or allowed doesn't do much for me. They're there, you need to understand them, and then you need to move on. Another hard part for me was the heavy emphasis on mathematical proofs and such. Since I don't have that type of background, I'm quickly lost...
Even though I wasn't completely enamored with the book, I still think it is a good title. For the right reader, this will be material that they will benefit from. For the average person who got training on Oracle or DB2 and understand basic relational database theory, this may be a bit more difficult to get through...

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This book sheds light on the principles behind the relational model, which is fundamental to all database-backed applications--and, consequently, most of the work that goes on in the computing world today.Database in Depth: The Relational Model for Practitioners goes beyond the hype and gets to the heart of how relational databases actually work.

Ideal for experienced database developers and designers, this concise guide gives you a clear view of the technology--a view that's not influenced by any vendor or product.Featuring an extensive set of exercises, it will help you:

understand why and how the relational model is still directly relevant to modern database technology (and will remain so for the foreseeable future)
see why and how the SQL standard is seriously deficient
use the best current theoretical knowledge in the design of their databases and database applications
make informed decisions in their daily database professional activities
Database in Depth will appeal not only to database developers and designers, but also to a diverse field of professionals and academics, including database administrators (DBAs), information modelers, database consultants, and more.Virtually everyone who deals with relational databases should have at least a passing understanding of the fundamentals of working with relational models.
Author C.J. Date has been involved with the relational model from its earliest days.An exceptionally clear-thinking writer, Date lays out principle and theory in a manner that is easily understood. Few others can speak as authoritatively the topic of relational databases as Date can.

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Practical Issues in Database Management: A Reference for the Thinking Practitioner Review

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(More customer reviews)Contains discussions on widely misunderstood, but vitally important, database issues. Considers how things should be according to relational theory, what goes wrong in practice due to failing to understand these fundamental concepts, and provides practical recommendations/workarounds where possible. A bridge between theory and practice. A concise and straightforward read, although to gain maximum benefit you should already have a reasonable understanding of relational databases.
Some of the main points are as follows. Relational databases can support data types of arbitrary complexity ("objects") - but we need DBMS vendors to implement the means to provide such support. Use declarative integrity constraints when possible. Avoid tables that allow duplicate rows - ensure all tables have a primary key (may require a surrogate key). Avoid redundant data. Ensure your database is normalized - avoids numerous problems. Resist the temptation to denormalize. Recognise entity supertypes/subtypes and how to implement as tables. Minimize use of nulls whenever possible. Also discusses climbing trees and quota queries. Separate chapters discuss all these points in detail.
A constant theme throughout the book is how poorly SQL and commercial DBMSs support relational concepts, and the numerous problems this causes. Personally, I believe there is little that most application/database developers can do about this, other than suffer what gets "inflicted" upon us. Pascal urges us to pressurise DBMS vendors to provide better relational support.
This book is firmly of the view that "relational is right". If you agree, you will probably like this book. Most of the references are to C.J Date's writings. However, I suspect some people won't like this book - those who believe "relational is wrong" (e.g. some OODBMS proponents); and those who prefer a "cookbook approach" for their specific DBMS and don't really care about what the "right way" is. I suspect some people will think that Pascal should "live in the real world" rather than worrying about theory, yet this book argues that it is because of the failure to understand fundamental database concepts that leads to "real world" databases having the problems that they do.
Helps database professionals educate themselves in fundamental database concepts, and illustrates the correct way of doing things in relational databases. Well worth reading.

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Databasics clearly explains the key concepts users and database professionals need to understand in order to build well-designed databases that answer business questions accurately and efficiently. Fabian Pascal, one of the industry's leading experts, identifies ten critical, recurring issues that both database users and vendors often fail to address appropriately. Pascal demonstrates why understanding these fundamentals is so important, providing detailed examples and solutions designed to help users escape the key pitfalls of database development. Among the topics covered: unstructured data and complex data types; business rules and enforcing data integrity; keys; duplicates; normalization; entity subtypes and supertypes; data hierarchies and recursive queries; redundancy; quota queries; and how to handle missing information. Along the way, Pascal offers no-holds-barred assessments of how well current SQL implementations and commercial products address each issue. Databasics, in short, is a complete guide to building databases right the first time, so they don't have to be rebuilt later.For all DBAs, developers, managers, and end-users that need to understand the best ways to design and implement database systems.

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Learning SQL Review

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(More customer 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.

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Updated for the latest database management systems -- including MySQL 6.0, Oracle 11g, and Microsoft's SQL Server 2008 -- this introductory guide will get you up and running with SQL quickly. Whether you need to write database applications, perform administrative tasks, or generate reports, Learning SQL, Second Edition, will help you easily master all the SQL fundamentals. Each chapter presents a self-contained lesson on a key SQL concept or technique, with numerous illustrations and annotated examples. Exercises at the end of each chapter let you practice the skills you learn. With this book, you will:



Move quickly through SQL basics and learn several advanced features
Use SQL data statements to generate, manipulate, and retrieve data
Create database objects, such as tables, indexes, and constraints, using SQL schema statements
Learn how data sets interact with queries, and understand the importance of subqueries
Convert and manipulate data with SQL's built-in functions, and use conditional logic in data statements

Knowledge of SQL is a must for interacting with data. With Learning SQL, you'll quickly learn how to put the power and flexibility of this language to work.

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Scaling MongoDB Review

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(More customer reviews)Scaling MongoDB is a short book that focuses on how scaling works on the document centered database of the same name.
The book is an enjoyable introduction to scaling MongoDB.
It begins by defining concepts such as sharding or splitting and in how MongoDB splits data between servers.
Step by step the book guide us in how to implement a database cluster, its configuration and administration.
It is so easy that in less than an hour you can have running a cluster in, for example, Amazon EC2 for testing.
It also offers a few tips on how to configure the database depending on the data you're working in.
This book is not a complete manual or an administration guide and it doesn't want to be on, it only provides us an introduction to mongoDB capabilities.
In short, a simple but useful book.

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Create a MongoDB cluster that will to grow to meet the needs of your application. With this short and concise book, you'll get guidelines for setting up and using clusters to store a large volume of data, and learn how to access the data efficiently. In the process, you'll understand how to make your application work with a distributed database system.

Scaling MongoDB will help you:

Set up a MongoDB cluster through sharding
Work with a cluster to query and update data
Operate, monitor, and backup your cluster
Plan your application to deal with outages

By following the advice in this book, you'll be well on your way to building and running an efficient, predictable distributed system using MongoDB.

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