Rating: 
Summary: Not perfect but outstanding nonetheless
Review: Trying to find a good book on SQL is really tough. One test is whether the author can explain normalization in a way that is (a) understandable to the book's lay audience, (b) mostly accurate, and (c) mostly devoid of references to relational formalism (which is "relatively" hard even for C.S. majors to grok). The Practical SQL Handbook passes that test. Many don't. (I venture to say that most don't.)The Practical SQL Handbook is a good tutorial and "cookbook" of--as advertised--very practically oriented SQL. It won't turn you into a database designer. But on the other hand it won't severely mislead you either. It will certainly give you every opportunity to learn the basics of SQL and a bit more, and it does so with a friendly and straightforward style. I don't think this is a brilliant book, but many competing books are awful. I'd give it 4 stars on an absolute scale, but for its relative merit, it gets a full 5.
Rating: 
Summary: Good book, annoying first experience.
Review: I used this book in a "Introduction to SQL cource", it was well written and simple for this purpose, I would give it a 5 star, however. The front page says "CD-ROM includes the Sybase SQL anywhere Runtime, a Full Featured SQL Database", and it was very annoying to find a read-only database restricted to the example used in the book, I found that very non-honest from the publishers. this book is not for the experienced database programmers, but is a very nice introduction with good examples that illustrated the use of SQL quite well.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Getting Started Guide to SQL
Review: What makes this book stand out is that it includes a sample database along with a run time version of Sybase which allows you to examine an actual database at every angle. The emphasis is on practical. I finally understand SQL which is a great feeling! I can't say enough good things about this book.
Rating: 
Summary: The most boring book ever written!
Review: This book is great if you can't fall a sleep. One of the worst computer books I ever read. I suggest Sam's teach yourself SQL in 21 days.
Rating:
Summary: The title says it all...
Review: While the title may sound a little flat, it describes prefectly the content between the covers, often a rare treat in the hyped-up technical book sector. This work is a wonderful introduction to standard SQL, presented in a platform-independent method that is appropriate for introductory texts. The section on DBMS-specific syntax makes the generic descriptions usable in the real world, so even though you will be learning basic SQL, you will be able to use this knowledge from day one. I highly recommend this to new SQLers.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent comprehensive first book on SQL
Review: I new little about SQL before reading this book 2 years ago. It's the only SQL book I've read and I've been doing alot of SQL work since then. Great book. Although, it does not go into much detail on performance tuning.
Rating: 
Summary: Examples don't work
Review: The book is well written, unfortunately nothing is more annoying than not having the examples work. I went to the publishers site and there were no updates or corrections. What good is the book if the examples don't work? Shame on the author and publisher for not correcting their mistakes or including a correctly working version of sql anywhere.
Rating:
Summary: A Very Complete Introduction to SQL
Review: I've been using different dialects of SQL for about 6 years now and I've found this book to be a very good resource. If you use SQL enough, you will probably eventually want to get a more advanced book (such as one by Celko), but this book will take you far. It starts off with basic information on relational databases, ER diagrams, and normalization, and, maybe best of all, throughout the book are numerous and clear examples. It pretty much uses one example database for most examples, and it explains the layout of that database at the start. Also, the book is very good about showing where certain details differ between SQL-92 and popular SQL implementations, such as SQL Server (Sybase and Microsoft), SQL Anywhere, Informix, and Oracle PL/SQL. The examples very carefully and very clearly step through potentially confusing areas such as subqueries and existence checking. The emphasis throughout is on - as stated in the title - practical SQL. In summary, I think this book is an excellent learning tool and a good desktop reference.
Rating:
Summary: Happy beginner from France
Review: As I am implementing an ERP in my group the need to use SQL is very strong. This book is very well written and helped me to succeed in my first SQL steps. Sorry for my poor english but this guide is very useful.
Rating:
Summary: "Very" beginner
Review: After reading the reviews, I purchased this book. The book is for the "very" beginner and if the user (you) are computer literate and using this in the real world, you will soon pass the authors as they explain SQl. The do an excellent job in explaining the basics, but leave out a key points of SQl, for example the "if's". Using this book in the real world will not be enough for you to support an SQL application. "SYBASE SQL Server 11" is much better reading for the buck.
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