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Rating: 
Summary: Nice introduction to SQL, but rather MS SQL Server specific!
Review: This book is about developing the skills to debug SQL. I particularly like the chapter
on best practices and the chapter on trees. Best practices talk about the things that
one should follow when doing SQL. I guess this would be particularly useful for people
developing "standard procedures" company-wide.The other chapter on Trees talks about implementing tree-like structure in databases. It
covers quite thoroughly on this topic and also zoomed in on various database-specific commands
like "connect by"(Oracle). Overall, this book is a good book on SQL, with chapters that cover normalization, choosing
datatypes and create,delete, insert ... and aggregate commands. The only thing I dislike
is that the author seems to be more well-verse in SQL Server and the examples are rather
SQL Server specific. :(
Rating:
Summary: Nice introduction to SQL, but rather MS SQL Server specific!
Review: This book is about developing the skills to debug SQL. I particularly like the chapter
on best practices and the chapter on trees. Best practices talk about the things that
one should follow when doing SQL. I guess this would be particularly useful for people
developing "standard procedures" company-wide. The other chapter on Trees talks about implementing tree-like structure in databases. It
covers quite thoroughly on this topic and also zoomed in on various database-specific commands
like "connect by"(Oracle). Overall, this book is a good book on SQL, with chapters that cover normalization, choosing
datatypes and create,delete, insert ... and aggregate commands. The only thing I dislike
is that the author seems to be more well-verse in SQL Server and the examples are rather
SQL Server specific. :(
Rating: 
Summary: Not Troubleshooting and Not SQL--Only SQL Server
Review: This book is not as advertised. The blurb on Amazon says:
"You'll get programming tips, best practices, plus coverage of Oracle SQL and PL/SQL and T-SQL for SQL Server." This book is a collection of introductory material on SQL and RDBMS's, with about 99% of the information and examples exclusively based on SQL Server. With very few exceptions, even the few things this author has to say about Oracle in this book are completely wrong. The most outrageous point I found was a simplistic explanation of transactions in Oracle as consisting of commit and rollback in SQL*Plus. In the more detailed section on SQL Server that follows it we find this little gem of a quote: "Unlike in SQL*Plus, the ROLLBACK command iin Transact-SQL can also be used to revert to the last savepoint." Clearly the author does not have a clue how transactions and savepoints work in Oracle, which gives the developer or DBA an extraordinary array of control mechanisms for transactions, both programmatic and interactive. If you want an introduction to SQL Server by someone with a few tired tips on Microsoft datatypes and a lot of oft-repeated generalities, this is the book for you. If you are looking for a serious book on troubleshooting Oracle SQL, get Harrison's Oracle SQL High-Performance Tuning and Tom Kyte's new book. If you're looking for how to tune SQL on Sybase/SQL Server, I'm not the one to ask, since I tune Oracle databases for a living.
Rating:
Summary: Not Troubleshooting and Not SQL--Only SQL Server
Review: This book is not as advertised. The blurb on Amazon says:
"You'll get programming tips, best practices, plus coverage of Oracle SQL and PL/SQL and T-SQL for SQL Server." This book is a collection of introductory material on SQL and RDBMS's, with about 99% of the information and examples exclusively based on SQL Server. With very few exceptions, even the few things this author has to say about Oracle in this book are completely wrong. The most outrageous point I found was a simplistic explanation of transactions in Oracle as consisting of commit and rollback in SQL*Plus. In the more detailed section on SQL Server that follows it we find this little gem of a quote: "Unlike in SQL*Plus, the ROLLBACK command iin Transact-SQL can also be used to revert to the last savepoint." Clearly the author does not have a clue how transactions and savepoints work in Oracle, which gives the developer or DBA an extraordinary array of control mechanisms for transactions, both programmatic and interactive. If you want an introduction to SQL Server by someone with a few tired tips on Microsoft datatypes and a lot of oft-repeated generalities, this is the book for you. If you are looking for a serious book on troubleshooting Oracle SQL, get Harrison's Oracle SQL High-Performance Tuning and Tom Kyte's new book. If you're looking for how to tune SQL on Sybase/SQL Server, I'm not the one to ask, since I tune Oracle databases for a living.
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