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Learning SQL on SQL Server 2005
khorner writes "I joined a local XP User Group in May of this year. As the IT Manager of Application Development for a 90+ year old agricultural cooperative, I'm introducing the concepts of agile development and need the support. Right off the bat, we've acquired some review copies of books and I volunteered for the O'Reilly book: Learning SQL on SQL Server 2005. I have been working with various versions of Microsoft SQL Server since 1999, so I figured I could give it a go." Read the rest of Kevin's review.
Learning SQL on SQL Server 2005
author
Sikha Saha Bagui & Richard Walsh Earp
pages
325
publisher
O'Reilly
rating
4
reviewer
Kevin Horner
ISBN
0596102151
summary
The organization and inconsistencies take away from the value of the book as a whole
Historically, I've found the O'Reilly books to be great references for professional programmers. I began with David Flanagan's Javascript: The Definitive Guide -- I think it was the 3rd edition. I enjoyed them for their reference value as well as business-oriented examples. Learning SQL on SQL Server 2005 does not, in my opinion, follow the mold I have become accustomed to from O'Reilly.
Learning SQL on SQL Server 2005 covers many of the topics necessary to introduce relational databases to the beginner. It is based on the authors' university course curriculum and it is evident with the review questions including with each chapter.
The authors cover important topics at an adequate depth for its target audience; however the organization needs some work. The first six chapters flip-flop across what I consider to be logical boundaries in a discussion on database development: schema versus data. Tools are a platform dependent subject necessary to discuss implementation.
The database provided could use some refactoring to get to a more cohesive and production level design. Not to be nitpicking, but as an example, equivalent domain level attributes for example, student number, are represented across tables as different column names. This is the attention to detail that drives me nuts on the professional level.
Chapter 1 sets the tone by touching multiple concepts and incorporates a smothering of screenshots. Over the first 25 pages (half being images and query result tables) we load the demo database, modify it, select from it, and cover to the Management Studio's syntax color coding and customization. Quite a lot to start off with for a novice, all with the assumption MS SQL 2005 is installed and ready to go.
Chapter 2 jumps into simple data selection of a single table and briefly hits the new MS SQL 2005 concept of synonyms.
Chapter 3 tries to focus on the schema oriented topic of table creation but falls short when jumping over to data topics like INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE. There is good coverage of data types, but we don't cover any design concepts of why we create tables and considerations for doing so. To the authors' defense, they state this is not a book on theory, but I think some level of theory is an important aspect to learn SQL.
Chapter 4 introduces the data selection concept of table joins and to do so, introduces the schema concept of keys.
Chapter 5 provides good coverage on internal functions for strings and dates and sets the foundation for more advanced queries.
Chapter 6 takes the reader through a logical process of developing a complex query. This is a good example process of taking a simple query and developing it further to satisfy a business need. Unfortunately, we experience some more inconsistency when we develop a join query using the WHERE clause - an inefficient and undesirable method the authors' discussed in chapter 4. Again, we jump from data concepts to schemas when we hit views and temp tables.
Chapter 7 through 10 present set operations, sub queries, and aggregate functions in a progressively logical manner. It would have been nice to have this progression prior to Chapter 6 and incorporate the concepts in the query development.
Chapter 11 throws in a thin coat of an introduction to table indexes and constraints: the final jump across topics.
Overall, the book provides an introduction to SQL topics. In my opinion, the organization and inconsistencies take away from the value of the book as a whole. If SQL is your profession (or you want it to be), with a list price of $44.99, Celko's SQL for Smarties is the better investment.
You can purchase Learning SQL on SQL Server 2005 from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Historically, I've found the O'Reilly books to be great references for professional programmers. I began with David Flanagan's Javascript: The Definitive Guide -- I think it was the 3rd edition. I enjoyed them for their reference value as well as business-oriented examples. Learning SQL on SQL Server 2005 does not, in my opinion, follow the mold I have become accustomed to from O'Reilly.
Learning SQL on SQL Server 2005 covers many of the topics necessary to introduce relational databases to the beginner. It is based on the authors' university course curriculum and it is evident with the review questions including with each chapter.
The authors cover important topics at an adequate depth for its target audience; however the organization needs some work. The first six chapters flip-flop across what I consider to be logical boundaries in a discussion on database development: schema versus data. Tools are a platform dependent subject necessary to discuss implementation.
The database provided could use some refactoring to get to a more cohesive and production level design. Not to be nitpicking, but as an example, equivalent domain level attributes for example, student number, are represented across tables as different column names. This is the attention to detail that drives me nuts on the professional level.
Chapter 1 sets the tone by touching multiple concepts and incorporates a smothering of screenshots. Over the first 25 pages (half being images and query result tables) we load the demo database, modify it, select from it, and cover to the Management Studio's syntax color coding and customization. Quite a lot to start off with for a novice, all with the assumption MS SQL 2005 is installed and ready to go.
Chapter 2 jumps into simple data selection of a single table and briefly hits the new MS SQL 2005 concept of synonyms.
Chapter 3 tries to focus on the schema oriented topic of table creation but falls short when jumping over to data topics like INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE. There is good coverage of data types, but we don't cover any design concepts of why we create tables and considerations for doing so. To the authors' defense, they state this is not a book on theory, but I think some level of theory is an important aspect to learn SQL.
Chapter 4 introduces the data selection concept of table joins and to do so, introduces the schema concept of keys.
Chapter 5 provides good coverage on internal functions for strings and dates and sets the foundation for more advanced queries.
Chapter 6 takes the reader through a logical process of developing a complex query. This is a good example process of taking a simple query and developing it further to satisfy a business need. Unfortunately, we experience some more inconsistency when we develop a join query using the WHERE clause - an inefficient and undesirable method the authors' discussed in chapter 4. Again, we jump from data concepts to schemas when we hit views and temp tables.
Chapter 7 through 10 present set operations, sub queries, and aggregate functions in a progressively logical manner. It would have been nice to have this progression prior to Chapter 6 and incorporate the concepts in the query development.
Chapter 11 throws in a thin coat of an introduction to table indexes and constraints: the final jump across topics.
Overall, the book provides an introduction to SQL topics. In my opinion, the organization and inconsistencies take away from the value of the book as a whole. If SQL is your profession (or you want it to be), with a list price of $44.99, Celko's SQL for Smarties is the better investment.
You can purchase Learning SQL on SQL Server 2005 from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Desperation leads some people to do strange things.
He might not be the target audience, but how would you expect a member of the target audience to pick up technical errors in a book such as this?
If it, say, taught you how to do something in a totally non-standard way that only worked on SQL Server when the standard way worked just as well, then I'd consider that to be a pretty big failing in a book like this. But somebody just beginning with SQL wouldn't have a chance of spotting something like that.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
And this is different from the numerous MySql books that get reviewed here, how exactly?
If anything SQL Server behaviour is a lot closer to that of Oracle and PostgreSQL (and possibly DB2, I don't know) than MySql can ever hope to achieve!
Many different vendors make DBMS services that speak SQL.... What product is this talking about?
I'm not sure, but the few dozen or so references to "SQL Server 2005" makes me believe it's talking about SQL Server 2005.
I could be wrong though.
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
It's called a database abstraction layer. You have to build your own objects that support saving themselves to the database. It's not as much work as it sounds like, and will actually save you a lot of trouble in the long run.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
when he said this:
" have been working with various versions of Microsoft SQL Server since 1999"
Man... talk about Microsoft winning the marketing war even when the tech is 3rd rate.
Also also question the need for a book on leaning sql that is specific to that bastard version of Sybase that Microsoft sells (the real answer is that PHBs typically sign off on book buys). Sql is sql, stuff that you have to code specific to any particuloar RDBMS is not sql, or at least not standard sql. Why not teach people standard sql before giving them the nonstandard exceptions for "Microsoft SQL Server" or Oracle for that matter? Or just title the book "How to write queries for MS SQL Server 2005"?
The answer probably is that you can't fill a book with "Learning SQL", there just isn't that much to it.
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
(lapses into never-ending coma)
The beginnings of SQL date back to the 1970s, and even in modern times it shows. People hadn't yet figured out how to deal with "NULL"s in any reasonable manner, and SQL has the dumbest NULL in any language I know of that is still in common use. People still thought empty lists were something exceptional, so "SomethingID IN ()" is an error, at least in the DBs I use, instead of a clause so obviously false the optimizer ought to positively jump for joy when it sees it. The syntax is fruity and unforgiving by modern standards, and the actual relational stuff that is supposed to underlie it all continues to be masked by the performance limitations in place in the 1970s; performance hacks now enshrined as the One Right Way to do things.
SQL sucks, because so much effort has been invested into it that no possible fix to it could ever get traction, and SQL is so wrong that trying to bend your new system to be backwards compatible with it will probably break your new system. The only hope we have is a brand new paradigm, and frankly those haven't been faring too well either, so far. But hope springs eternal.
Someday this mess will be resolved, but your guess is as good as mine as to which direction it's going to come from. SQL-the-language sucks, but it still manages to set the bar pretty high for any sort of technology to replace it, even just as a language-switchout on an existing DB server. (I mean something actually not SQL, not SQL adapted to Yet Another Procedure Language or SQL adapted with Yet Another Proprietary Extension.)
Ah, good. I've been waiting for a long time for somebody to relieve me from the mind-boggling complexity of inner joins, subselects, triggers, referential integrity rules and stored procedures by adding DOM, XSLT, XPath, DTD and XmlSchema on top of inner joins, subselects, triggers, referential integrity rules and stored procedures.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
While still behind Oracle in many other ways, SQL server 2005 does boast a nicely remade user tools in Management Studio.
I took MS-SQL classes back to back earlier this year with the first one using SQL server 2003 and the 2nd one using 2005 express and the difference was night and day in ease of use.
In 2003 you had to have 2 or 3 different applications up in order to create a table, populate it with data and then view the table data. I was constantly trying to do things in the window which didn't allow that action....Plus transact SQL was like an (even more) retarded version of SQL+
With Management Express it can all be done from the main window -I just wonder why it took them 10 years to figure this out.
there are still some funky aspects of MS-SQL language itself (the GO directive for instance), but this is a great new tool.
Of course now that TOAD works on MS-SQL this may not matter much to database diehards, but I do see signs of Microsoft improving GUIs, simplifying designs and improving usability both here and in VisualStudio.
Too bad they won't be able to do the same for Vista.....
What's the speed of dark?