Rating: 
Summary: Its a Reference and just that
Review: Found it quite useful to quickly refer to commands, their syntax and their use. The syntax diagrams take up a lot of useful space in the book but I found the book to be quite handy every time i forget the syntax of a command. It is not a detailed SQL manual though
Rating: 
Summary: 'Perfect' example of bad computer book
Review: I advice you to take a look at it to see how poorly one may organize a book pretending to be a 'quick reference'.The guy (or Osborne) makes his best in overcomplicating a search of needed information.Book is splitted in three parts with the same content and every part is also splitted in 4-5 parts sorted alphabetically - so you have a lot of 'ordered' sequences that creates complete disorder. For every command you should look through all three parts, because some (very short ususally) explanation is in part one, picture (schema) is in part two and explanations for the picture in part three. I've red tens of computer books and seen different examples, but for the first time I found a book where picture and accompanying text are splitted and put in different part of the book. It's definitely a record. And don't believe author about Informix and Sybase, because the book is almost completely about Oracle SQL, that author pretends to know. I can only imagine the level of Oracle customer support, because the guy is Senior(!) guy in Oracle's Worldwide support with the Oracle's 'Center of Expertise department'.
Rating:
Summary: Good Content but could be better organized
Review: I am a student of Oracle and found the book to be very useful and handy for quick references. It is well written and can be a useful desktop reference. However, the organization of the book could be better. The keywords section should be with the main content.
Rating:
Summary: Its a Reference and just that
Review: I bought the book in order to familiarize myself with SQL. I am a programmer, and I learn best from reference books, so a book called the "SQL Programmer's Reference" seemed like it would be perfect... WRONG.Nothing is organized. Logically one would expect commands to be alphabetically listed. Nope. Okay, perhaps grouped by function? Nope. And what's worse, there are sections for each command in two or three completely unrelated sections of the book. The index is terrible. The examples are pathetic. Even the grammar is to be laughed at. As stated in other reviews, this is the perfect example of a lousy book. Not only would I recommend avoiding this book, but also avoid anything else written by this author.
Rating:
Summary: Completely disappointed
Review: I bought the book in order to familiarize myself with SQL. I am a programmer, and I learn best from reference books, so a book called the "SQL Programmer's Reference" seemed like it would be perfect... WRONG. Nothing is organized. Logically one would expect commands to be alphabetically listed. Nope. Okay, perhaps grouped by function? Nope. And what's worse, there are sections for each command in two or three completely unrelated sections of the book. The index is terrible. The examples are pathetic. Even the grammar is to be laughed at. As stated in other reviews, this is the perfect example of a lousy book. Not only would I recommend avoiding this book, but also avoid anything else written by this author.
Rating:
Summary: Completely disappointed
Review: I bought the book in order to familiarize myself with SQL. I am a programmer, and I learn best from reference books, so a book called the "SQL Programmer's Reference" seemed like it would be perfect... WRONG. Nothing is organized. Logically one would expect commands to be alphabetically listed. Nope. Okay, perhaps grouped by function? Nope. And what's worse, there are sections for each command in two or three completely unrelated sections of the book. The index is terrible. The examples are pathetic. Even the grammar is to be laughed at. As stated in other reviews, this is the perfect example of a lousy book. Not only would I recommend avoiding this book, but also avoid anything else written by this author.
Rating:
Summary: Poor at Best
Review: I find the book poorly organized and lacking information. The examples are poor and the rest appears to be a collection of pieces of a reference manual. The cover states that it covers multiple DB platforms, meaning bits and pieces from Sybase and Oracle and complete for none.
Rating:
Summary: A very average Oracle Reference manual
Review: Other than the poor organization and the appearance of being rehashed Oracle documentation, my main gripe is the book's mismarketing, the reason why I bought the book is because I thought it would have equal coverage of Oracle, Informix and Sybase detailing any extensions of all three vendors. But as it happens the book is primarily an Oracle reference (as is indicated by the sources of reference for the book) the only references to other database vendors appears to be only where the author happens to know about them. There are features of Informix that I used to find very useful, I had hoped this book would indicate whether other database vendors incorporated these features or whether there would be alternative ways of achieving the desired results, but no, if Oracle doesn't do it then nobody else does it! An example of this is selecting into temporary tables, Informix does this and as I found out later so does Sybase but Oracle does not appear to allow this so it does not get a mention. Also I noticed the cover refers to Sybase but within the book there are only references to Microsoft SQL Server, although the commands referred to work equally well on both systems this does not inspire any confidence in me.
Rating:
Summary: A very average Oracle Reference manual
Review: Other than the poor organization and the appearance of being rehashed Oracle documentation, my main gripe is the book's mismarketing, the reason why I bought the book is because I thought it would have equal coverage of Oracle, Informix and Sybase detailing any extensions of all three vendors. But as it happens the book is primarily an Oracle reference (as is indicated by the sources of reference for the book) the only references to other database vendors appears to be only where the author happens to know about them. There are features of Informix that I used to find very useful, I had hoped this book would indicate whether other database vendors incorporated these features or whether there would be alternative ways of achieving the desired results, but no, if Oracle doesn't do it then nobody else does it! An example of this is selecting into temporary tables, Informix does this and as I found out later so does Sybase but Oracle does not appear to allow this so it does not get a mention. Also I noticed the cover refers to Sybase but within the book there are only references to Microsoft SQL Server, although the commands referred to work equally well on both systems this does not inspire any confidence in me.
Rating: 
Summary: A handy guide to SQL!
Review: This book is definitely a handy reference for SQL programmers. It gives the quickest succinct way to look up specific SQL commands and syntax with brief but clear examples. Syntax diagrams for each command are included in a separate section for the interested reader... Its not a indepth tutorial type manual but a definitive quick reference to SQL
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