Learn SQL in Three Days
by Jose A. Ramalho, Jose A. RamalhoOverview
Learn SQL in Three Days is an introductory overview to the popular structured query language that is ideally suited for programmers who have some experience with relational database software, but no specific experience with SQL. Database expert José A. Ramalho provides the reader with the fundamentals of standard SQL appropriate for beginners using any particular SQL database including creating database objects such as tables, indexes, and views; using expressions and operators; maintaining and joining tables; and creating queries and subqueries. Features that make this book appropriate for the SQL beginner include review questions at the end of each chapter to test your newfound knowledge and a summary of functions, commands, and data types for several of the most popular SQL dialects. The companion CD-ROM contains a 60-day trial version of SQLBase from Centura Software Corporation; an evaluation copy of Advantage Database Server 5.7 from Extended Systems; and a sample database used in the chapter examples.
Author Biography: José A. Ramalho has 18 years of publishing and consulting experience in the computer industry and has written more than 70 books published in Portuguese, English, and Spanish. He is the best-selling computer book author in Brazil and a columnist for the Brazilian newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo. His titles for Wordware include Learn SQL and Learn Microsoft SQL Server 7.0. END.
Product Details
- ISBN-13:
- 9781556227653
- Publisher:
- Wordware Publishing, Inc.
- Publication date:
- 11/25/2000
- Series:
- Wordware Database Library
- Edition description:
- BK&CD-ROM
- Pages:
- 275
- Product dimensions:
- 7.51(w) x 9.22(h) x 0.84(d)
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The back cover of the book says that 'Learn SQL in Three Days' is 'introductory' and 'ideally suited for programmers who have some experience with relational database software, but no specific experience with SQL.' You should take this description seriously. The author will, for example, use words such as 'predicates' and 'unary' without defining them. He seems to expect his readers to approach this book with a background sufficient to understand such terms. (Don't let this scare you off, however. I didn't remember what those terms meant. I had to look them up in a computer dictionary--and I got through this book just fine.) Bear in mind that the book is an introduction to SQL: you won't find a 'right outer join' explained in this text, nor will this book serve as a heavy-duty reference book for all your high-powered SQL questions. This book does not go into great detail about the design of database tables (e.g., don't expect a discussion of 'a fully normalized data model'). Given the narrow audience for whom this book was written, I believe it to be effective. I studied the book and then obtained a certification in ANSI SQL from Brainbench. However, I *studied* the book (I didn't merely *read*) it, and I tried the author's examples on my own, and modified them, and thought about them. It took me more than three 8-hour days to get through this book, and after all those hours of study, I still didn't find the Brainbench certification to be easy. The CD that comes with this book has a 60-day trial version of Centura SQLBase 7 and a sample database. Nice touch. This allows you to follow the examples in the book, and modify them, and experiment with SQL (and destroy things with no real harm done). The book has the usual assortment of typos that slip into written works (for example, the author sometimes refers to a table by two different names, perhaps reflecting a name change during the process of writing the book). I don't believe the author explained correlated queries very well, and I went to an Internet tutorial to understand them better. A couple of important words of advice ('corrigenda', if you will): If you copy the file 'pubssqlb.dbs' to your own hard drive, make sure to change the 'read only' attribute of this file to 'off'. If you don't change the read-only attribute to 'off' (at least, this was my experience), you'll see a cryptic error message when you attempt to connect to the pubssqlb database: 'Attributes not compatible.' Also, be aware that the data in the 'type' column in the 'titles' table has extra spaces added to the data (e.g., 'business' is actually 'business space space space space'). Therefore, some of the author's example select statements, such as SELECT AVG (price) FROM titles WHERE type='business', must be written without the equality. Use 'LIKE' instead; for example: SELECT AVG (price) FROM titles WHERE type LIKE 'business%'.
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