Coverage Level: This books is not a mathematically rigorous coverage of RDB theory. It is not a to-the-point pragmatic information dump for practitioners. Instead it seems to land in the middle as a textbook for one of the IT certifications that blossomed in the late 90s or DB design class in an associates degree program. However, if that's what you are looking for then this good book.
Topic Coverage: The title is an ordered listing of topic coverage quality, depth and enthusiasm. Design >> App Dev > Admin.
The book is, without exception, overly verbose; however, the more detailed breakdown is...
- SQL: 3/5 Required intro for a book of this sort but better covered in any number of O'Reilly etc books.
- ER diagrams: 5/5 Best I've read but I'm not sure if ER diagrams are really a topic to hang one's hat on.
- Scheme design: 4/5 Well covered but a futile topic to teach IMHO, requires first hand failures to learn.
- Normalization: 5/5 Really belongs in this book between set theory and practitioner texts on RDMSs.
- Views, triggers & procedures: 2/5 contrived examples that either suggest shoving the whole application into the DB or skipping these key features.
- Admin: 3/5 Not bad but more quickly and less expensively available in O'Reilly etc books.
Biggest Complaint: Strangely CS phobic in its lack of rigor which is unacceptable given its length and price.
Bottom line: A fine book, even a good book if you are looking for a middle ground text. Its strengths slant more towards schema design than DB dev or admin.
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Database Design, Query Formulation, and Administration: Using Oracle and PostgreSQL
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Reviewed in the United States on 19 March 2011Verified Purchase
