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The Manga Guide to Databases
stoolpigeon writes "Princess Ruruna, of the Kingdom of Kod, has a problem. Her parents, the King and Queen, have left to travel abroad. Ruruna has been left to manage the nations fruit business. Much is at stake, Kod is known as "The Country of Fruit." Ruruna is not happy though, as she is swamped by paperwork and information overload. A mysterious book, sent by her father, contains Tico the fairy. Tico, and the supernatural book are going to help Princess Ruruna solve her problems with the power of the database. This is the setting for all that takes place in The Manga Guide to Databases. If you are like me and learned things like normalization and set operations from a rather dry text book, you may be quite entertained by the contents of this book. If you would like to teach others about creating and using relational databases and you want it to be fun, this book may be exactly what you need." Read below for the rest of JR's review.
The Manga Guide to Databases
author
Mana Takahashi, Illustrated by Shoko Azuma
pages
220
publisher
No Starch Press
rating
9/10
reviewer
JR Peck
ISBN
978-1-59327-190-9
summary
Unleash the power of the database.
I was pleasantly surprised by this book. It really does do a great job of introducing relational database management systems. All the SQL is ANSI standard. (Except for one exception, joins, which I'll discuss later.) There is no mention that I could find of any certain RDBMS product. Barring any proprietary quirks, everything in here should work on just about anything from Access to Oracle. Teamed up with PostgreSQL or MySQL, I think that one would have everything they need to teach an extremely inexpensive (materials wise anyway) class on building and using databases. I think that the manga format would make it especially attractive to younger people. By younger, I think high school age students would really enjoy it and I think even college students would find it to be fun if they weren't too stuffy. If I were teaching professionals, I might worry that they wouldn't take it seriously, but the content is solid and anyone who can lighten up can also learn from this book.
It is an introductory level book. I wouldn't hand this to an entry level dba and turn them loose on a production system. It teaches what a relational database is, about the entity/relationship model, using standard sql, as well as transactions, recover, indexing and query optimization. That's a pretty decent foundation. There is also a final chapter that is half manga and half more traditional straight text. The manga section gives some information on real world uses for databases and wraps up the story. The second section covers things like multi-tier web applications, stored procedures, triggers, partitioning and replication. It does this all rather quickly and basically just gives the reader an idea of what the terms mean. There is no information on actually implementation details. It wouldn't have made sense anyway as this would have necessitated leaving the generic approach taken in the rest of the book to discuss specific RDBMS products.
The art work is well done and the side story of Ruruna, her assistant Cain and the fairy Tico is entertaining if a bit silly. I thought that it really helped to take what is really dry subject matter and lighten it up. It also introduces examples of real world situations that are being modeled in the data. They are a bit contrived as all examples are in these situations, but they still help to reaffirm how the various pieces fit together so that databases can be helpful. Each chapter picks up with the story and is graphics heavy. This is followed with a by a review section that reverts to a more text heavy mode and then there are review questions. The answers to the questions appear immediately following the questions. I think it would have been nice to have them further removed, so that one wouldn't have any opportunity to see the answers on accident. That said, the review and quiz do a nice job of letting one gauge if they have really picked up the material. If the quiz is a struggle, it is safe to say that going back over the chapter would not be a bad idea. The questions are pretty straight forward and apply the material directly. They are not vague or wishy washy, so not knowing the answers means the reader doesn't know the material.
As I mentioned, the books sticks to standard SQL. I was happy to see this. The only change I would make is that joins are done in the old style as a part of the where clause. The book discusses various types of joins but does not give examples of anything but a normal inner join. This may help someone considering this book to get a good feel for just how far it goes. I found the information on transactions, locking, and indexing to be very good. I really didn't expect much in this regard, but I've worked with experienced, decent developers that I think would learn some things from this book especially about rolling back transactions and the limits of recovery. (Of course these are the situations where DBAs and developers are going to have some of their more interesting interaction. My bonus tip of the day is the developer that calls you in the morning about the database problem, is the one who caused it right before he went home the night before.) That said the discussion on recovery is vendor agnostic like the rest of the book and so there are not really any implementation details. The indexing section is also a bit brief and while it does a good job of explaining what an index is, I think there is too much emphasis on them increasing read speed with enough emphasis on how they may not do that at all and how they can hurt writes. These things are all mentioned, but very briefly.
If I were teaching teenagers or even lower class college students, I wouldn't hesitate to build a class around this book. I think that the amount of fun and heightened interest it could bring to the table would far outweigh the need to supplement the book's few shortcomings. I like that it does not tie the reader to any database product. I would also not hesitate it to a friend who wanted to learn on their own. I think someone has much higher odds of making it through this book compared to the textbooks on relational databases that I had to work through in school. But it is just an introduction. It gives the readers the tools for basic interactions with a database, and a handle on the basic terminology of database administration. Assuming that one will get more than that could lead to trouble. All the way around this is a solid book and I wish there were more like it in the IT world.
You can purchase The Manga Guide to Databases from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
It is an introductory level book. I wouldn't hand this to an entry level dba and turn them loose on a production system. It teaches what a relational database is, about the entity/relationship model, using standard sql, as well as transactions, recover, indexing and query optimization. That's a pretty decent foundation. There is also a final chapter that is half manga and half more traditional straight text. The manga section gives some information on real world uses for databases and wraps up the story. The second section covers things like multi-tier web applications, stored procedures, triggers, partitioning and replication. It does this all rather quickly and basically just gives the reader an idea of what the terms mean. There is no information on actually implementation details. It wouldn't have made sense anyway as this would have necessitated leaving the generic approach taken in the rest of the book to discuss specific RDBMS products.
The art work is well done and the side story of Ruruna, her assistant Cain and the fairy Tico is entertaining if a bit silly. I thought that it really helped to take what is really dry subject matter and lighten it up. It also introduces examples of real world situations that are being modeled in the data. They are a bit contrived as all examples are in these situations, but they still help to reaffirm how the various pieces fit together so that databases can be helpful. Each chapter picks up with the story and is graphics heavy. This is followed with a by a review section that reverts to a more text heavy mode and then there are review questions. The answers to the questions appear immediately following the questions. I think it would have been nice to have them further removed, so that one wouldn't have any opportunity to see the answers on accident. That said, the review and quiz do a nice job of letting one gauge if they have really picked up the material. If the quiz is a struggle, it is safe to say that going back over the chapter would not be a bad idea. The questions are pretty straight forward and apply the material directly. They are not vague or wishy washy, so not knowing the answers means the reader doesn't know the material.
As I mentioned, the books sticks to standard SQL. I was happy to see this. The only change I would make is that joins are done in the old style as a part of the where clause. The book discusses various types of joins but does not give examples of anything but a normal inner join. This may help someone considering this book to get a good feel for just how far it goes. I found the information on transactions, locking, and indexing to be very good. I really didn't expect much in this regard, but I've worked with experienced, decent developers that I think would learn some things from this book especially about rolling back transactions and the limits of recovery. (Of course these are the situations where DBAs and developers are going to have some of their more interesting interaction. My bonus tip of the day is the developer that calls you in the morning about the database problem, is the one who caused it right before he went home the night before.) That said the discussion on recovery is vendor agnostic like the rest of the book and so there are not really any implementation details. The indexing section is also a bit brief and while it does a good job of explaining what an index is, I think there is too much emphasis on them increasing read speed with enough emphasis on how they may not do that at all and how they can hurt writes. These things are all mentioned, but very briefly.
If I were teaching teenagers or even lower class college students, I wouldn't hesitate to build a class around this book. I think that the amount of fun and heightened interest it could bring to the table would far outweigh the need to supplement the book's few shortcomings. I like that it does not tie the reader to any database product. I would also not hesitate it to a friend who wanted to learn on their own. I think someone has much higher odds of making it through this book compared to the textbooks on relational databases that I had to work through in school. But it is just an introduction. It gives the readers the tools for basic interactions with a database, and a handle on the basic terminology of database administration. Assuming that one will get more than that could lead to trouble. All the way around this is a solid book and I wish there were more like it in the IT world.
You can purchase The Manga Guide to Databases from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
So I have an honest question. How did Manga/Anime become such a nerd thing? I have been a nerd for quite a few years now and none of my nerd friends (RL friends that is) are into Manga. However, whenever I browse online nerdy things (/. in this example) Manga seems a prevalent thing. Can people tell me how you got into it and why you like it?
has all sorts of marketing for a certain database product.
The Power Rangers guide to VI.
and for the little kids out there...
Teletubbies do SQL and PHP
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Aw, that's a shame. Where's the book with the story of young Gogol who starts in his garage trying to find a single sacred shard to save his father, Sir Adword, so the kingdom can prosper again. It lies somewhere in the several million other shards across many distant lands. There is only one way to identify the shard. He must first discover the fastest path to a land that may or may not have it and alert all the other lands if he finds it ...
My work here is dung.
Manga: is there anything it can't teach?
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
Otaku != Anonymous Coward (basement dweller)
:P
Too busy playing Katawa Shoujo.
There must be a hidden Misha route here somewhere...
I get the feeling this discussion is going to go down the same road that the Manga guide to Statistics one did...
So, now you can run reports on the instances of tentacle penetrations based on any number of hierarchies and dimensions!
I've bought both the database one and statistics one and I must say I agree with the review, these books does a great job of giving a novice a quick introduction to the world of databases/statistics. While not covering everything, they will build up some base for the reader to allow him to read more in-depth books that might have been to heavy to start out with.
I for one sure as hell had a hard time understanding statistics.
"A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer"
finally, CS majors don't have to wait until they're back from class and safely in their parents' basement before jacking off to animes
...and it *is* a nice intro book for anyone that is new to databases and wants a DIFFERENT way of learning the basics. The key word here is different and in this case I am not sure if that is a good thing or not. The Manga guides take concepts and present them in a cutesy anime way. I feel that the approach probably works well in Japan but I am not sure how much of a market there is for this in the USA. There are other books that teach subjects in a different way such as the 'Head First' line. I guess this is one of those cases where you dilute the market with a whole bunch of different ways to get concepts out to people and some stick better than others. This book certainly presents the ideas that you would want any database newbie to know but its a very select group.
If you are into manga/anime and are a computer person this is probably right up your alley. The writing is good and the artwork is very good. My only concern is I don't know if there is enough of a client base long term.
=Smidge=
Is it just my observation, or is eldavojohn an idiot?
I have always liked Britney Spears' guide to semiconductor physics.
I especially like the illustration on conduction and valence bands.
I'm going to hold out for the fan-service edition.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
?!
hido~i! ~_~;
And then the eeeVVviiLL project manager locked away his db administrator in a cubicle and condemned him to managing ecommerce and exchange servers for the rest of his life.
I think you're being harsh. I look forward to seeing how they relate being raped by a giant tentacle monster to enforcing referential integrity. It seems like a fairly obvious analogue to me, but to others it might provide some insight.
Rumiko Takahashi should have done the chapter on port binding and security...
Seriously, I think we see this on Slashdot at least once a year. Or at least, we definitely see a lame Manga Guide to SOMETHING once a year.
Do you read this book from right to left like a traditional Japanese manga?
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
If I were teaching teenagers or even lower class college students, I wouldn't hesitate to build a class around this book.
I couldn't finish the first few sentences of the summary. Your evil plans have failed due to my failure to read your evil plans. I would never subject college students of any caliber to manga no matter the subject (check that; I suppose study of Japanese might merit use of manga, with visual elements tied so closely to written elements).
SELECT count(1) FROM book_collection WHERE book_type = 'DORK' AND book_summary like '%childish%';
One Row Returned.
I am seriously suspect of demographic this book is attempting to sell to. I shall put on my list of questions to potential hiree's; have you read this book?
If the answer is yes, it's an automatic no for the job.
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
If you are like me and learned things like normalization and set operations from a rather dry text book, you may be quite entertained by the contents of this book.
I'm sorry, but SQL should be taught dry, no lube and no sedative. Anything else would be blasphemous or at least disturb the natural order of things.
In all seriousness though, if you need this medium to make databases interesting for the reader, you're probably pandering to the wrong crowd. Anyone who needs to learn SQL will probably get a less childish book. Teenagers (and certainly college students) will buy this for the few laughs they get out of it, and that's about all the novelty you'll get out of it.
I personally can't wait for the "Manga guide to Systems Administration" where princess Ruruna is faced with her arch nemesis The User. I hear in chapter 3 she opens up her box to replace defective parts. In chapter 15 she learns about security and discovers evil hackers have exploited her badly configured server. 2 chapters later it happens again but then she learns about a strange magic called firewalling.
Other guides I'd love to read:
If the only way you can learn a technical subject like databases is to have it presented in a cutesy comic book format, well, should you really be going after a technical skill set?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
All Manga readers are nerds
x_IamSpartacus_x is a nerd
x_IamSpartacus_x reads Manga
The third statement doesn't follow from the first two.
But this is completely valid
All Manga readers are nerds
x_IamSpartacus_x reads Manga
x_IamSpartacus_x is a nerd
My other sig is extremely clever...
This book sounds like a way better option than the book I bought last week, "The Hentai Guide to Microsoft SQL Server."
The apparent attractiveness of substandard quality generally sexist drawings just doesn't do it for me, and I can't honestly see what people like about this style of comics. Its not that they are comics, because overall I like a good graphic novel etc, but the actual style of the drawings which is just plain unappealing. I don't know anyone in real life with eyeballs the size of a tennis ball, who always flashes her panties at me and has a completely pointed chin, nor why anyone would want to see that again and again. Every Manga character seems to look like every other one essentially.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
Finally an answer to the question 'how do we motivate the unwashed masses to educate themselves?'.
No - not the article, which was excellent.
No - nor on the book - which is merely continuing a tradition of excellence in graphical education quite usual in Japan but sadly lacking elsewhere.
No - this is the /. contingent of commentators being 'funny' about foreign(er) ideas - because WE invented the internet and Cobb was an American and no darn .....
Well - you get the gist.
VERY disappointed, makes me wonder whether to stop /. watching - there are many other good tech sites with a lot less bias and a lot less jingoism to wade through.
Nico M, London, GB.
So now my DBA can be EVEN MORE disconnected from reality?
KawaiiSQL
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Manga seems to be a very crash-course way of expressing concepts lately, but it is certainly no substitute for reading regular books. As much as I would like to tear through a regular book as quickly as a manga book, it just doesn't see right.
:D
While I applaud the authors efforts to bring such a complex concept down to storybook level, I don't think the Western World is ready for manga guide books just yet. On the other hand, I do like the fact that they cover not just Databases, but Physics, Calculus, Statistics, and Electricity in other book in their series. Perhaps younger readers will find these books of interest and become enamorated with learned about advanced concepts. (Think the 13-15 y.o. crowd.)
For good measure however, books on Aritmetic, Geometry, and Algebra should be a must read for all ages since there are people in College who don't know how to add without a caluclator. (To the authors, here's an idea for the plot of a future book: The protagonist must learn how to do math mentally without an electronic device!)
But why not have some fun in the process. Robots are a common theme in manga. Why not write a book on how to build them? Even the guys at Time Life who publish the This Old House series of books never touched a topic like that. On the other hand, who wanted to see Bob Vila with blue hair?
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
the hentai guide do penetration testing
They lifted this from a Nigerian Prince scam. Seen variations of it a hundred times in my spam box. Finally, a way for Nigerian scammers to get legitimate funds (royalty payments).
Table-ized A.I.
Learning from a story could be fun, but stories should involve real situations, not just define terminology. So there could be episodes like Cherry Picker Server Smashup where the cherry picker truck has run into the office wall and crushed the server, and the princess needs to rebuild the database. Lessons can be taught through stressful mistakes like a Bank Bust episode where duplicate payroll records cause multiple cheques to be issued to employees.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
This reminds me quite a bit of A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. Teaching through adventure stories sounds like a good idea for just about any subject, as long as you can make it fun and interesting.
Princess Ruruna starts out trying to use MS Access, but after being tentacle-raped by it, she switches to MySQL.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Princess Ruruna beautiful code was abducted by tentacled project leader Spaghettius, who did unspeakable thing to it all night. Next morning code turned into sado-masochistic bitch and was quiering only for sex.
I haven't seen that much manga, but what I've happened to read (a little Guyver and Blade of the Immortal, and the Planetes series) has had little to do with cute princesses. Where do people get this idea that manga is about a few particular things when it's a medium used to tell stories in a wide range of genres?
INSERT INTO Rob1980
VALUES (4,'barbed-tentacle','jizz','brain','sqlfordummies')
I got this book for my birthday, it's awesome :D
Posession of it will seal the fate of the victim forever: virginity.
I recently went into a Borders bookstore and they had dismantled their entire two aisles of Manga. It was not even a year ago when I was trying to figure out what in the hell Manga even was. Seems this fad has come and gone faster than the Harry Potter trading card game (anyone remember that one?)
All the SQL is ANSI standard. (Except for one exception, joins, which I'll discuss later.) ...
The only change I would make is that joins are done in the old style as a part of the where clause.
Old-style joins are still ANSI SQL. Yes, JOIN is often called the "ANSI join", but that doesn't mean it's the only one, merely that it's something new that the ANSI standard introduced.
This has been out since October 2008... maybe the author just finished reading it finally?
The princess really IS in the other castle.
> Manga guide to Recursive Programming: By far the most artistic book of them all, princess Ruruna decides to draw herself drawing a picture of herself drawing a picture of herself drawing a picture of herself drawing a picture of herself drawing a picture of herself drawing ...
Quick! Call M.C. Escher!
It wouldn't be the first tyme. Rock star Brian May of the rock band Queen, he wrote "We Will Rock You", was studying astrophysics.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Been to an anime con? All non-nerds are scared off!
Anyone want to review this?
http://www.hackettandbankwell.com/about
"Hackett and Bankwell is an educational comic/cartoon manual designed to teach the finer points of the GNU Linux platform using Ubuntu."
Free downloads as .pdf e-book (issues 1 & 2).
http://www.intarwebz.com/hackett-and-bankwell-1-free-pdf-ebook-version-11/
Nico M, London, GB.
In all seriousness though, if you need this medium to make databases interesting for the reader, you're probably pandering to the wrong crowd. Anyone who needs to learn SQL will probably get a less childish book.
I would respectfully disagree. There is a word in japanese - smth. like "riai". It means so much as the basic, profound idea of the thing. If one can formulate these basic ideas in a way accessible to a rookie, this could be a real good start into a field. This depends from the learning style of the person, of course.
Also the format of "graphics, less text" forces the authors to think what information they really need to put forward and drop the explanation of explanation.
When learning about SQL myself, I have missed this high level "so what" in the books. Now I am a professional in database research business, so I know a bit or two about SQL :-). When I explain SQL to the newbies, I do not talk volumes, but rather manga. It seems to work out well.
...a stunned silence fell upon the hall.
I'm coding a Berkeley DB application in an MPI environment like crazy. I have a horde of tabs open for the DB manual open and I'm running out of coffee..
Wake me up when they come up with "Manga Guide to Berkeley DB". I'll buy one. ;)
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
The reviewer wouldn't hesitate to build a RDBMS college course around a book that only teaches inner joins in older syntax... because it's more fun? Maybe some Dr Seuss for the English department or Zunes for all music majors?
I've thumbed through this book a couple times. If you're in to manga and kinda almost sorta in to databases, maybe you'll fall into the specific niche this book targets but if you actually want to learn something, spend your money smartly on a far more complete, albeit less fun, book.
I envision a manga series in which everyone is obsessed with databases and SQL queries, in the style of (say) Hikaru no Go. The part that's hard to decide is where to take the plot: Defeat a giant mega-corporation by selecting the right datasets at the right time? Find love with carefully crafted nested selects? Fight invading aliens? Cast spells? It hardly matters, it would be fun.
I want my Cowboyneal