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Rating: 
Summary: Clearly mixed reviews
Review: I have to give this book a very mixed review. As many reviewers pointed out, there were some errors at key points, which muddied things up for someone new to databases. There were a few places where pages were added with little value; I really didn't need to see 6 pages of the "Mighy-Mite motors product catalog", the 20 pages of SQL CREATE TABLE statements, or even the chapter on CASE tools. On the positive side, I appreciated the discussion of normalization, as well as "Codd's Rules". For those who have used keys packed with information, the section on "Avoiding meaningful primary keys" was useful. I appreciated the cursory mention of data flow diagrams; as I often think that database designers and database application developers would benefit from using these techniques to communicate the intersection of tables and process. I would have appreciated including this in the case studies. The case studies were thought provoking, and brought home some of the problems about many-to-many relationships.
Rating:
Summary: Clearly mixed reviews
Review: I have to give this book a very mixed review. As many reviewers pointed out, there were some errors at key points, which muddied things up for someone new to databases. There were a few places where pages were added with little value; I really didn't need to see 6 pages of the "Mighy-Mite motors product catalog", the 20 pages of SQL CREATE TABLE statements, or even the chapter on CASE tools. On the positive side, I appreciated the discussion of normalization, as well as "Codd's Rules". For those who have used keys packed with information, the section on "Avoiding meaningful primary keys" was useful. I appreciated the cursory mention of data flow diagrams; as I often think that database designers and database application developers would benefit from using these techniques to communicate the intersection of tables and process. I would have appreciated including this in the case studies. The case studies were thought provoking, and brought home some of the problems about many-to-many relationships.
Rating: 
Summary: Leave this one on the shelf!
Review: I've been programming for quite a while, but up until a couple of years ago, I had never done anything with databases. When I switched jobs and needed to learn, I asked a few friends where to begin. At the time they recommended "SQL For Dummies" and "Oracle8: The Complete Reference" -- starting with the first and then diving in to the second. This didn't work so well for me. SQL For Dummies is actually a reasonable review of constructing basic SQL statements, but it didn't provide me with any conceptual framework for thinking about databases. The complete Oracle8 reference book certainly seemed to have a lot of material in it, but it was a bit too daunting (1300 pages) for a tutorial. I learned the basics that I needed to learn and have gradually assimilated things since then. Recently I came across this book at Amazon and found that it had pretty good customer reviews, so I thought I'd check it out. It is excellent. This is the book I wish I had had from day one. The book begins by reviewing basic concepts of databases and database design, plus by going over the various documents and diagrams that typically go along with databases. Then it briefly reviews the SQL one would use to create databases. And it ends with three detailed database design examples. These examples are pretty substantial -- in each case I read the description and thought "this is too complex a database to cover here" but the author broke the problem in comprehensible pieces, drew entity-relationship diagrams, and worked through the design. I highly recommend this book to people just starting out with databases. You will probably need to follow it with something that teaches you more SQL, but that should follow, not preceed, an introduction like this.
Rating: 
Summary: Great place to start learning databases
Review: I've been programming for quite a while, but up until a couple of years ago, I had never done anything with databases. When I switched jobs and needed to learn, I asked a few friends where to begin. At the time they recommended "SQL For Dummies" and "Oracle8: The Complete Reference" -- starting with the first and then diving in to the second. This didn't work so well for me. SQL For Dummies is actually a reasonable review of constructing basic SQL statements, but it didn't provide me with any conceptual framework for thinking about databases. The complete Oracle8 reference book certainly seemed to have a lot of material in it, but it was a bit too daunting (1300 pages) for a tutorial. I learned the basics that I needed to learn and have gradually assimilated things since then. Recently I came across this book at Amazon and found that it had pretty good customer reviews, so I thought I'd check it out. It is excellent. This is the book I wish I had had from day one. The book begins by reviewing basic concepts of databases and database design, plus by going over the various documents and diagrams that typically go along with databases. Then it briefly reviews the SQL one would use to create databases. And it ends with three detailed database design examples. These examples are pretty substantial -- in each case I read the description and thought "this is too complex a database to cover here" but the author broke the problem in comprehensible pieces, drew entity-relationship diagrams, and worked through the design. I highly recommend this book to people just starting out with databases. You will probably need to follow it with something that teaches you more SQL, but that should follow, not preceed, an introduction like this.
Rating:
Summary: Good 1st book on relational databases...
Review: My background is in non-relational databases and supporting them. This book explains the relational database theory in such simple, clear terms, that it was easy to relate the non-relational database that I'm familiar with relational database theory. This book was very objective about explaining the fundamentals of relational database theory without a lot of mis-directed 'fluff' or 'clutter' to boost the page count. I felt that the examples were great too. With all due respect to the efforts of the authors, editors, and publishers, the book did have some typographical errors in key places which was very confusing. There were only a handfull of them. I'd suggest if you find yourself TOO confused (especially when reading about one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many relationships), it's a clue that you just ran across a typo.
Rating:
Summary: Good 1st book on relational databases...
Review: My background is in non-relational databases and supporting them. This book explains the relational database theory in such simple, clear terms, that it was easy to relate the non-relational database that I'm familiar with relational database theory. This book was very objective about explaining the fundamentals of relational database theory without a lot of mis-directed 'fluff' or 'clutter' to boost the page count. I felt that the examples were great too. With all due respect to the efforts of the authors, editors, and publishers, the book did have some typographical errors in key places which was very confusing. There were only a handfull of them. I'd suggest if you find yourself TOO confused (especially when reading about one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many relationships), it's a clue that you just ran across a typo.
Rating:
Summary: beginner oriented
Review: The author claims to have condensed a college course down into a single 300 page book, which I would have trouble believing except that she apparently skipped over 1/2 of the course content. I do not think that this is a good book to explain Relational Databases, OR Database Design. The author gives a cursory explanation of each, then dives into an example DB with many hard-to-understand tables.
After confusing the reader with a 200,000 foot overview of Databases, the author goes into a very detailed explanation of the normalization process, which is IMPOSSIBLE to understand, and a long, drawn-out review of the theory of how a Relational Database Server should work, with no explanation of how current products do or do not adhere to this theory.
The author spends quite a bit of time plugging a Macintosh-Based ER system, all the way down to a section explaining the drawing environment of that *piece* of software.
Overall, this book was a waste of time. Buy Database Design for Mere Mortals by Michael J. Hernandez , a MUCH better book.
Rating: 
Summary: An excellent weekend reading for database beginners.
Review: The book accomplished its main object: introduce the reader to database concepts without going into depth into any of the areas. This book should also be marketed as "Database for Dummies". I recommend this book to anyone who never read about databases. However, if you know what tables/indices are, get something else.
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