Rating: 
Summary: The future of application development
Review: This book clearly lays out the case for declarative application development and presents what is required to achieve the next level of development automation. The material is easy to consume and will never be outdated.For those that are "in the trenches", the book's content may seem too far from current reality be useful. The fact is, technology which implements the ideas Date describes, now exist, and will be pervasive shortly. Current model-based code generation tools come close, and there is at least one product that fully realizes Date's suggestions ... Those wishing to stay ahead of the curve will benefit greatly from understanding the fundamental concepts presented in this book.
Rating:
Summary: The future of application development
Review: To me the content of this book is not more than I would expect in a magazine article or something from an op-ed page. As with anything from Chris Date, it seems to mostly be pointing out how miserably the "relational" database vendors have implemented the One True relational model introduced by Codd and championed by Date. Beyond that, it makes the point that "business rules", the semantic layer typically bolted ad hoc onto a "relational" database with triggers and "application" layers, are better enforced as some sort of constraints expressed as part of a more formal "data model" of the database. Beyond that the book does not seem to say much, and I do not see that it offers the reader anything more than opinions. I personally agree that "relational" databases like Oracle, DB2, SQLServer, PostgreSQL, etc., do not really provide a "relational" database in the sense that Chris Date thinks of "relational", and I agree that it would be better to shift some "business rule" enforcement towards the database. But I do not think these things are likely to happen as described in this book anytime soon, and in any case I do not think this book offers anything to current or future users of any databases which is not offered much better by other books.
Rating: 
Summary: Inadequate new value for the reader.
Review: To me the content of this book is not more than I would expect in a magazine article or something from an op-ed page. As with anything from Chris Date, it seems to mostly be pointing out how miserably the "relational" database vendors have implemented the One True relational model introduced by Codd and championed by Date. Beyond that, it makes the point that "business rules", the semantic layer typically bolted ad hoc onto a "relational" database with triggers and "application" layers, are better enforced as some sort of constraints expressed as part of a more formal "data model" of the database. Beyond that the book does not seem to say much, and I do not see that it offers the reader anything more than opinions. I personally agree that "relational" databases like Oracle, DB2, SQLServer, PostgreSQL, etc., do not really provide a "relational" database in the sense that Chris Date thinks of "relational", and I agree that it would be better to shift some "business rule" enforcement towards the database. But I do not think these things are likely to happen as described in this book anytime soon, and in any case I do not think this book offers anything to current or future users of any databases which is not offered much better by other books.
Rating:
Summary: Eliminate the Coding!
Review: You're in IT, your looking for a way forward and OO just doesn't do it for you. You need this book. The revolution's here, the king is dead, the future is relational. Sorry for the hyperbole. I'm biased. I'm a big Date fan. But I've been around a bit (if not as long as Date) and only this hits my buttons. I mean even the net didn't prickle me the way this does. OK, the review. Well the book is short, but it's fantastic presentation material. E.g. the fig on page 52 should be all you need for CEO buy in. For depth you need to look at Date's other books (and read between the lines somewhat). Does it work as an intro to the subject? I'm pretty sure it does, but I'm too familiar with the area to really know. Being critical, I'ld say he does pull his punches somewhat. It maybe his style, but relegating his dismissal of the Object world to one footnote and half a page is somewhat unsatisfactory. Come on Chris, be shriller! Also the proper scope of the subject is neglected. Contrary to appearances, programmers will not be redundant, they're just released writing from tedious code. Cool code will still be needed to implement new datatypes and new functions. Also many apps like spreadsheets (one big non-scalar datatype?) and games will not ever be declarative. But, for me I'm sold. I can easily see a order of magnitude productivity gain possible if we'd used this approach (and if the tools were there) in my present B2B work. For many, I suspect the lack of implementation detail or advice on doing business rules will frustrate. It's not a how-to book, but an appendix of links to business rules sites should have been included. In Summary, a defining book, but the reader needs to buy into the relational vision and will need to look elsewhere for advice on implementing the vision.
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