The Practical SQL Handbook: Using SQL Variants (4th ed.)

Continuing the grand tradition of reviewing computer texts sent to us by publishers, Slashdot author chrisd has read the book The Practical SQL Handbook: Using SQL Variants and written up a review. If you are interested, read on ... The Practical SQL Handbook, 4th Edition, SQL Variant author Judith S. Bowman, Sandra L. Emerson, Marcy Darnovsky pages 512 publisher Addison Wesley rating 9 reviewer chrisd ISBN 0201703092 summary An indispensable introduction to SQL. This is probably one of the best books I've read for those new to SQL. It's the kind of book I wish I had many years ago when I was first learning about databases. The only problem is the SQL variants are not really for me, a developer uninterested in Oracle, MS-SQL, Sybase or Informix. That said, this is a minor part of the book and doesn't really detract from it, and I can even come up with any number of reasons why a developer would want to have that information. A comparative text would be useful by itself, but I think that trying to teach SQL and several SQL variants is too big a job for any one book.

The books introductory text on SQL is clear and concise. I also found its treatment of normalization to be as close to perfect as can be with one exception: It doesn't tell when you can go too far with normalization. In an introductory text this is acceptable, and perhaps wise considering what many new to relational databases consider acceptable database design.

And while the introductory chapter is great, the chapters on selects and joins is so clear and useful that I would even call it exciting. The terrific thing about this book is when you have finished reading it you should come away with a feel for how the underlying DB actually works and what it is doing to produce the data for you.

I personally found this book very useful, even though I am using MySQL for the application I'm writing. But the feature set that MySQL chooses to support will logically limit the usefulness of the this book for the MySQL user. Programmers developing for Postgres, Firebird, and others will obviously get much more out of the book and its treatments on subqueries and views than will MySQL users.

One thing that did turn me off is the inclusion of a CD-ROM. The CD has a copy of Sybase for the user to work with. I don't need to explain that the internet is a superior place to put such things. That said, at least it wasn't glued to the back cover (a pet peeve) and was instead bound into the book like a magazine reply card. Many publishers perceive that they can charge more for a book that has a CD, but I just find it annoying and wasteful. But that's hardly a reason not to buy this book and place it on your bookshelf in a prominent position, not on the bottom ghetto shelves next to the stack of paper for your printer.

In short, those looking for an book about SQL, that won't teach them bad habits would be well served by this book (and likely by its sister book, The Practical SQL Handbook: Using Structured Query Language by the same authors) and those who think they know SQL will find it a useful text to have handy as well.

You can purchase The Practical SQL Handbook: Using SQL Variants from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to submit yours, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

Is the sequel better?

[tomknight]

I note that this is the 4th edition - is this one of those times that the sequel is better than the original?

Tom.

Personal Opinion

[Cinnibar CP]

As pretty much the local DBA-by-default among the developers here, I would say that having this manual, or an earlier edition similar to it, in the hands of the average programmer is invaluable. It gives them the basics of SQL theory across the multiple databases we work with and reduces the number of SQL-related questions I have to deal with.

For DBAs and advanced SQL programmers, however, I would recommend database-specific manuals that give greater insight than an overview text such as this, as this type of manual is unavoidably poor in the more important aspects of query optimization. Jack of all trades and master of none, as the case usually is.

Decent review, BTW (+1 INTERESTING, article moderation)

MySQL again

[fm6]

I don't want to start the "is MySQL a real RDBMS" debate again. Well, maybe. Anyway, it seems a little strange for a discussion of advanced SQL to center around MySQL. The only serious defense I've heard for MySQL is that it handles very simple queries more quickly than other engines. If you're a serious doing a database app that requires you to think about normalization, you probably need a database that's smart enough to optimize a complicated query.

Re:Very controversial book

[gazbo]

Although you can do some replication work yourself, I'm happy to concede that if you want the work done for you you need thrid party software. To say that Postgres doesn't support it is a bit misleading though.

Postgres doesn't support automated replication in the core code but there are open source plugins that will handle this. Equally, PHP does not support gzip functions as part of the core language, but should this be highlighted as a shortcoming of the language? No - just install zlib et voila!

I don't care whether the automated tools come with the core download or not - if they're freely available and work cleanly with the code (not dirty hacks) then there is no problem. Nested subqueries in MySQL is a problem as there was no (as far as I could google) patch I could apply that would enable this functionality. This is not true for pg replication.

A chapter on the shortcomings of Postgres wrt replication would be half a page long and consist of a list of URLs, saying "install one of these".

Re:SQL Limitations ?

[reemul]

Not such a good example - you can model that with just three tables. One each for types A, B, C, and add an "owned by" column to the B and C tables. It's many-to-many relationships that need separate tables to map out how items interrelate, a simple "is owned by/child of" just needs a column.

Business logic should be separate from the database, with triggers and stored procedures used primarily for data integrity issues. (Which is why the poor-to-nonexistent support for transactions and foreign key relationships make MySQL a sad also-ran for many purposes compared to the expensive proprietary options. But I still hope...) You can get some significant performance benefits to putting some often re-used procedures into the database, but that doesn't make it a best practice for all circumstances. It's overused by both lazy front-end programmers who can't be depended upon to validate the input they are accepting and bored DBAs who are trying to look busy. And such items are some of the least portable code you can write for different database systems, whereas table creation and select/insert/update commands work pretty much anywhere. Doesn't mean SQL is perfect, but if your problem comes from trying to get it to do things that properly should be done somewhere else, the failure is in the design, not SQL.

Why Sybase?

[puppetman]

Closed source, proprietary.

Why not Postgres 7.2 for the Linux crowd, and Firebird (Open Source version of Borland's Interbase db) for the Windows crowd.

Lots of graphical tools available, and not that difficult to set up (compared to Oracle, anyway).

Both implement all features that a modern relational database are supposed to support.

Re:That's because

[edhall]

SQL != SEQUEL

Although SQL is largely derived from it, SEQUEL was the query language of IBM's first Relational Data Base Management System, System/R, dating back to the mid-1970's. (IBM's second --and current -- RDBMS was creatively named DB2.) So pedantic old farts like me are careful to distinguish between the two and pronounce SQL as ess kyoo ell to avoid confusing it with its more primitive predecessor, SEQUEL (though it's not like there is any real chance of confusion these days).

-Ed