Rating: 
Summary: A great tutorial book!
Review: I have recommended this book to several of my colleagues,
and everyone has found it to be an excellent step-by-step
explanation of the ANSI SQL language - perfect as a tutorial
or a refresher. Yet, unlike many tutorials, it goes beyond
the basics, giving pointers on how to work around "tricky"
design issues.
Rating: 
Summary: A good guide for someone who has never used SQL before.
Review: Our company is using this book to teach our training staff on how to build ad-hoc queries. We have people who had never used a SQL database before, and they found this book to very useful.
If we could only pick one book to use to teach someone on how to create SQL queries, it would have to be this book.
Rating:
Summary: A well written and useful language handbook.
Review: The authors have put together something rare; a computer
book which is both well written and useful. Most of the books I read on computer languages fail to strike a balance
between common sense appeal and providing information.
The Practical SQL Handbook succeeds in striking such a
balance. The authors provide the reader with a feel for the
many dialects of SQL that may be encountered in the real
world without getting too bogged down in mundane details.
The authors also include sections which focus on the areas
where the student is likely to go wrong in forming an SQL query. The software included with the book is easy to use and install, giving the student everything he/she needs to become quite comfortable with SQL in a very short time
Rating:
Summary: A well written and useful language handbook.
Review: The authors have put together something rare; a computerbook which is both well written and useful. Most of the books I read on computer languages fail to strike a balancebetween common sense appeal and providing information.The Practical SQL Handbook succeeds in striking such abalance. The authors provide the reader with a feel for themany dialects of SQL that may be encountered in the realworld without getting too bogged down in mundane details.The authors also include sections which focus on the areaswhere the student is likely to go wrong in forming an SQL query. The software included with the book is easy to use and install, giving the student everything he/she needs to become quite comfortable with SQL in a very short time
Rating:
Summary: The best for learning concepts and structure
Review: Outstanding book for beginner looking to learn SQL from scratch. Thrown into an SQL job with no experience whatsoever, this book helped me become functional in a very short period of time. Provides sound fundamental concepts which will help lead to more efficient procedures, scripts, web-design, etc.
Rating:
Summary: Very Well Written
Review: So many authors of technical books know the material, but don't know how to convey it clearly and concisely to others. These authors do. I highly recommend this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Acceptable teaching book, poor reference manual
Review: I have had this book for a year now and pretty much hate it. It is not a "handbook". It is not a book that is good for reference. This book is good if you do not know any SQL and want to do a cover to cover reading. This book's index is horrific and its content remedial (only the most basic of queries are discussed), so do not plan on using the book as a reference beyond that. The book should be titled "Read This Once Through to Learn Basic SQL". It is not a handbook and it is not practical, so it's name is quite the misnomer.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best.
Review: I have been using and referring to this book for years. It is easy to find examples of what I'm looking for. There were no attempts to make this book any thicker than necessary. There are very few good SQL books out there. The books are either too simple or they try to thicken the book with garbage. This one is right on target.
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.
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