Rating: 
Summary: A student who had to suffer while reading
Review: For anybody who does not have to read this book - don't waste your time and money to read it. Simple things are explained in a far too complex way. The only good part about the book are the later chapters where SQL is introduced.
Rating: 
Summary: An excellent text for someone that is new to databases
Review: How can I put it nicely? I guess I can't so I'll be blunt. This book is great if you enjoy reading four paragraphs for information that can be readily conveyed in less than a sentence. I'm guessing if the authors wanted to omit all the worthless babble, this would be no thicker than a brochure and they couldn't get away with charging the insane list price it currently retails for. In addition to poor stylistic taste, this book often fails to instruct the student on fundamentals of database principles by skipping vital steps in closure algorithms or normalization rules. If this is a "first book," then the authors should assume nothing about their reader's knowledge of database principles and not skip steps when explaining an algorithm for the first time.
Rating: 
Summary: An overwritten brochure
Review: How can I put it nicely? I guess I can't so I'll be blunt. This book is great if you enjoy reading four paragraphs for information that can be readily conveyed in less than a sentence. I'm guessing if the authors wanted to omit all the worthless babble, this would be no thicker than a brochure and they couldn't get away with charging the insane list price it currently retails for. In addition to poor stylistic taste, this book often fails to instruct the student on fundamentals of database principles by skipping vital steps in closure algorithms or normalization rules. If this is a "first book," then the authors should assume nothing about their reader's knowledge of database principles and not skip steps when explaining an algorithm for the first time.
Rating:
Summary: Too complex...
Review: I had to use this book for an upper level course and found that everything was explained harder than it actually needed to be. As with the first reviewer, I found that the later chapters that involved SQL were the only chapters that I got anything out of.
Rating: 
Summary: Could be a little bit better....
Review: I read the whole entire book and found it to be helpful in understanding the subject of Databases. It uses running examples to explain different concepts. However I did find many grammatical errors and I think some subjects could have been explained better like Weak entities and Normal forms.
Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: I'm taking a Database class right now. I'm using this book as another reference besides the required textbook and found out that this book is very clear in explaining things. Worth every penny !
Rating:
Summary: could have been better
Review: my class is using this book as the primary book. I have found that the explainations are often very wordy when they can be put very simply. So far the book has been using essentially one running example, i think this is one of the weaknesses in the book. also i have found that the excercises do not necessarily reflect the examples in the text. could be better.
Rating:
Summary: There's a reason the used price hews...
Review: There is a reason the used price for this book hews so closely to the list price: the book is a high-quality piece that is extraordinarily well written and easy to follow as well as deeply imbued with a great deal of information. I currently have three titles in my list of "all-time great Computer Science books" -- from the selectivity it should be clear how difficult it is to earn a spot on said list -- and this is the third book on it (in order of date read, not quality). The other two are Patterson & Hennessy's Computer Organization and Design and W. Richard Stevens's TCP/IP Illustrated, Vol. 1. I was not particularly interested in databases -- the subdiscipline -- prior to taking the course for which I purchased this book. I must say though that the combination of straight-forward descriptions and easy to quickly grasp examples makes this topic ever more accessible. The canonical examples provided -- consistent throughout and extended as new topics are broached -- as well as the relaxed yet careful language utilized throughout make this book a solid and worthwhile investment. More of an investment than the book itself (any book), though, is the time spent reading it. I was careful to read the book extraordinarily thoroughly -- even short snippets underneath examples and what have you -- and every time in doing so I was rewarded for this extra investment of time with enhanced knowledge and understanding. There is very little that is superfluous in this book yet at the same time every description is adroit; no description leaves you wondering about some aspect or another: the book is exceedingly thorough.
Rating: 
Summary: Easy to understand, relevant - but so boring to read
Review: This book is ok in many ways. The topics seems relevant for a deeper understanding of relational database design (academic). It's easy to understand. On the downside: The book doesn't use UML but E/R (which is a downside in my opinion). And finally - the book is quite boring to read.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent resource. Informative, helpful and readable
Review: This book, along with the online resources, has been a very valuable resource to me. This book is exactly what I have been looking for and was afraid did not exist. The book was quite readable and the examples helped explain some of the more difficult concepts. All in all, it made databases seem simple
| 
