Rating: 
Summary: Invaluable Reference Book
Review: SQL in a Nutshell is not for those who don't know SQL. What it is, is a very good reference resource when you can't remember how the syntax goes. Breaking each command down to highlight the syntax differences, and in fact the workability of each command, between the basic relational databases. One interesting feature is to let the reader see how far some (Microsoft SQL Server) have deviated from the SQL standards. You're not going to (most likely) read it from cover to cover, rather you will jump to the section(s) that you want and try to absorb the information. Rarely does time pass when I do not find myself referring to this book, just to check to little details. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Serviceable addition to anyone's SQL library
Review: SQL Server 2000, MySQL, Oracle 8i, and PostgreSQL 7.0 implementations of the SQL-99 standard are covered in this desktop reference to SQL syntax. The contents include a short history, concepts, statements (the bulk of the book) and functions, as well as an appendix with a helpful list of SQL and vendor-specific keywords.This book is meant, as its subtitle states, as a "desktop quick reference", and indeed, its strengths are the ease of reference and the handy comparison among the SQL-99 and vendor implementations. There are weaknesses to the book, such as when researching a particular statement, the description and statement can appear quite cryptic at times. But in spite of its uneven quality, and because of the fact of a multi-database world, this reference is a serviceable addition to anyone's library.
Rating: 
Summary: Not one of the best Nutshell books
Review: The author's relatives and PR flacks notwithstanding, this is one of the poorest Nutshell books O'Reilly has published. It is also unusually expensive -- $29.95 for 214 pages vs. the 560 pages in the infinitely better "Web Design in a Nutshell". Except for some of the PostgreSQL and MySQL sections, I read the book cover to cover, but I wouldn't consider it even a good review of the subject. Part of the problem is SQL itself -- the standard bears little relationship to reality given both the standard's writers' overly academic approach and the vendors' disinclination to follow it. It might have been better to skip SQL99 altogether and just talk about the real products. You can't program a standards document. The concepts chapter is very thin and the documentation of SQL functions almost non-existent. There is almost no useful coverage of stored procedures. I'm not convinced MySQL and PostgreSQL are even worth including -- are they really used by more people than Sybase and DB2? (I think Informix and Ingres can be safely omitted by now.) Are any open source products used by people willing and able to pay this much for such a short book? The book consistently gives the impression of having been rushed out in a hurry. Perhaps the third edition will be worth having. Meanwhile, get Kline's "Transact-SQL Programming" if you are using Sybase or an older version of MS SQL Server, or "The Guru's Guide to Transact-SQL" if you have a newer version of SQL Server.
Rating:
Summary: The devil is in the details
Review: The problem with this book is that it covers various SQL dialects, but don't tell you how to convert between them. Because of this basic flaw the book falls flat on its face as far as I'm concerned.
Rating: 
Summary: Great desktop reference
Review: There are a lot of books available about using SQL with Relational Database Management Systems.
You can find books that tell you how to do SQL with Oracle, how to do it with MS-SQL, with MySQL and so on, but hardly any of those books tell you when you are using a vendor specific feature, left alone what the SQL Standard would be.
So when switching to another database system one is often suprised how this system thinks SQL should be done.
If you are working with different systems at the same time, you are often left on your own.
Reading the documentation of the one system, comparing it with the documentation of the other system, can cost you a lot of time.
But a nice little book comes to your rescue, SQL in a Nutshell. What SQL in a Nutshell offers is a reference of all SQL99 Statements and functions. For every statement it shows you what the syntax should be according to the SQL99 Standard and how Oracle, MS-SQL Server, MySQL and PostgreSQL implement them. How they differ from the standard, if the support a feature, if the support it with variations or if the do not support it at all. By the way, that the vendors stick to the standard is the exception.
True, you could get all these information from reading the standard documents and the vendor manuals, but it is so much easier and faster to have it all right there in a single book as a desktop reference.
So if you are using more than one of the covered database management systems this book will save you a lot of time and is well worth its money.
Rating:
Summary: What the book is, and what it is not.
Review: This book is designed as a reference -- the book that you keep
near your workstation after you learn the basics, because you
haven't got everything memorised yet. It's great for that. I
refer to it when I have a question. But actually I picked up this book with no prior knowledge of
SQL (except that I knew it was for doing database stuff) and
learned enough to get started in a couple of days. The intro
is great for that. The great thing about this book is that it covers the four
major SQL implementations in a relatively unbiased fashion.
This is nice because if you switch from one to another you
don't have to go looking for a new book. (Otherwise, you
would; as you will see from reading this book, the various
implementations differ considerably and also differ from
the unimplemented standard, which the book also covers.) This book is not, and is not intended to be, a tutorial for
people who are utterly unfamiliar with the very concept of
a database, but it's okay to be utterly unfamiliar with SQL. This book also is not a strategy guide for how to plan and
organise your database; this is an _implementation_ book.
As such, it doesn't cover things like deciding which data
to put in which table, when to create another table and
when to create an entirely separate database, or that sort
of thing. What it does tell you is what query syntax you
need to create and interact with your database, your tables,
and the data in your tables. It also explains datatypes,
because they vary considerably between the different SQL
implementations, and table types and the various attributes
(indeces and whatnot). Additionally, this book is not a security guide. It does
include information about permissions, but only in terms of
the syntax used, not in terms of strategy.
Rating:
Summary: What the book is, and what it is not.
Review: This book is designed as a reference -- the book that you keep
near your workstation after you learn the basics, because you
haven't got everything memorised yet. It's great for that. I
refer to it when I have a question. But actually I picked up this book with no prior knowledge of
SQL (except that I knew it was for doing database stuff) and
learned enough to get started in a couple of days. The intro
is great for that. The great thing about this book is that it covers the four
major SQL implementations in a relatively unbiased fashion.
This is nice because if you switch from one to another you
don't have to go looking for a new book. (Otherwise, you
would; as you will see from reading this book, the various
implementations differ considerably and also differ from
the unimplemented standard, which the book also covers.) This book is not, and is not intended to be, a tutorial for
people who are utterly unfamiliar with the very concept of
a database, but it's okay to be utterly unfamiliar with SQL. This book also is not a strategy guide for how to plan and
organise your database; this is an _implementation_ book.
As such, it doesn't cover things like deciding which data
to put in which table, when to create another table and
when to create an entirely separate database, or that sort
of thing. What it does tell you is what query syntax you
need to create and interact with your database, your tables,
and the data in your tables. It also explains datatypes,
because they vary considerably between the different SQL
implementations, and table types and the various attributes
(indeces and whatnot). Additionally, this book is not a security guide. It does
include information about permissions, but only in terms of
the syntax used, not in terms of strategy.
Rating:
Summary: Good Reference
Review: This book is great for a desktop reference. It contains loads of SQL commands and it shows how to use them for different database packages, like MySQL.
Rating: 
Summary: A Useless Reference
Review: This books does not make sense. It attempts to provide a reference to various "dialects" of SQL, but it does a poor job on all of them. I (like most developers) only use a single vendor's SQL (Oracle in my case), so I can't comment too much on the accuracy of the others, but there are so many errors and ommissions in the Oracle SQL that the book is less than useless. As an alternative, if you use Oracle I strongly recommend Oracle SQL: The Essential Reference (also from O'Reilly) by Kreines - it is exactly what it claims to be and is what this book should have been! If you don't use Oracle - I guess there are still of few of you out there :) - there must be something better.
Rating:
Summary: Cross platform syntax reference
Review: This is a solid desk reference for SQL syntax which provides invaluable material on the portability of each type of statement. The heart of the book is the four hundred pages of statement reference. Each statement is described with it's syntax and options. Then the support for each database (DB2, MySQL, Oracle, PostgresSQL, and SQL Server) is described in detail. There is a similar 120 page reference on SQL functions.
This is classic O'Reilly. The text is well written, and the book is very dense and well organized. There is a little introductory material but the heart of the book is the statement and function reference. You will get the most out of this book if you already have a reasonable understanding of SQL. This is not a book for beginners.
This would make an ideal desktop reference, particularly for someone working in a cross-platform environment that goes directly to the SQL.
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