Rating: 
Summary: Not a good book ! PLEASE DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK!
Review: I was forced to buy this book as my instructor follows this book in his graduate level database management class. I was really disappointed after "studying" this book. I do not know the expertise level of the author in database management but he does not know how to explain different aspects of database management systems. I think he feels obligated to use complex sentences in his book to explain various topics. Probably he does not know that in the scientific world using simple sentences are more norm than fashion. After reading some of the topics, I was really lost. For eg. on normalization the author does not even talk about first normal, second normal form but starts from the BCNF. The chapters on tree structured indexing and hash-based indexing are horrible. While reading these chapters, there were times, when I was totally confused and wondered what exactly the author was trying to convey. I would suggest to author to read the book "Modern Database Management" by McFadden, Hoffer and Prescott in order to "learn" how to write a book and how to explain topics in a simpler way. I am really disppointed with the author. I will not recommend any computer science students to buy this book for reference and would not recommend instructors to follow this book in their classes. Buying this book was a waste of money.
Rating:
Summary: Not a good book ! PLEASE DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK!
Review: I was forced to buy this book as my instructor follows this book in his graduate level database management class. I was really disappointed after "studying" this book. I do not know the expertise level of the author in database management but he does not know how to explain different aspects of database management systems. I think he feels obligated to use complex sentences in his book to explain various topics. Probably he does not know that in the scientific world using simple sentences are more norm than fashion. After reading some of the topics, I was really lost. For eg. on normalization the author does not even talk about first normal, second normal form but starts from the BCNF. The chapters on tree structured indexing and hash-based indexing are horrible. While reading these chapters, there were times, when I was totally confused and wondered what exactly the author was trying to convey. I would suggest to author to read the book "Modern Database Management" by McFadden, Hoffer and Prescott in order to "learn" how to write a book and how to explain topics in a simpler way. I am really disppointed with the author. I will not recommend any computer science students to buy this book for reference and would not recommend instructors to follow this book in their classes. Buying this book was a waste of money.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent mix of database theory and practice
Review: If you teach a database management course in an "high-end" undergaduate program, I suggest that you take a close look into this book. It provides a comprehensive and well-balanced selection of topics (technical, theoretical, practical), non-nonsense and accurate writing, and lucid presentation. From what I've seen thus far, it's probably the best general-purpose database management textbook in the market.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent mix of database theory and practice
Review: If you teach a database management course in an "high-end" undergaduate program, I suggest that you take a close look into this book. It provides a comprehensive and well-balanced selection of topics (technical, theoretical, practical), non-nonsense and accurate writing, and lucid presentation. From what I've seen thus far, it's probably the best general-purpose database management textbook in the market.
Rating: 
Summary: Not for novices! It's a good monography; average textbook.
Review: Most of examples in this book are in words, not in pictures. Text is not structured very well, key words are not highlighted with bold font as you'd expected. You have to do your own work with highlighter / pencil to find and mark the key points in the text. Examples, if any, are explained sometimes too briefly. Problems and especially solutions to the problems (on the author's web site) are very good. This book is not for novices; you'll have to invest a lot of time to understand the subject and what was implied by the author.
Rating: 
Summary: take another Book.
Review: not good enough, still have typo and did not explain some term (i.e. 1NF, 2NF) I will recommand Ramez Elmasri's Fundamentals of Database systems
Rating:
Summary: Good overall review, but leaves loose ends
Review: Overall, I like this book. It is well presented and formatted and a better introduction to the concepts than computer-science oriented books like the C.J. Date book. The book is fairly modular and provides chapter references to potentially prerequisite topics that may reside earlier or later in the book.One problem I did have is that there are sometimes some loose ends left hanging. I realize that not everything can be covered, but sometimes a concept will be mentioned and it is stated that a full discussion is out of scope for the book. Fair enough, but the explanation that is given of the concept is sometimes not sufficient to make any discussion of it worth the effort. This is a minor problem, though, because most of the topics are covered with sufficient detail to get a high-level understanding.
Rating:
Summary: A Practical Review of Database Management Systems
Review: Reviewed by Qi Luo I have read quite a few books about Database Management Systems in the market. I have worked for many leading companies to build large-scale high-performance trading engine systems for stock exchanges, such as Pacific Exchange, the national third largest, NASDAQ Stock Market, the national second largest, commodities exchanges, and Internet auction engine, and global company rating search engines. This book is the first one that systematically discusses the internal architecture and physical structure of DBMS. I found this book is very detail-oriented, practical, and accompanied by hands-on projects on the Internet. After I reviewed carefully this book, I like it full of details about the internal architecture and physical structure of DBMS, a lot of interesting exercises following each chapter. It's a good mix of database theory and practice. I always wanted to introduce the internals of DBMS, but could not find an easy way to do all the information once in one place. This book gave me some useful hints to introduce DBMS for anyone interested in knowing how a DBMS actually works. Professor Raghu Ramakrishnan is well known for educational software. I have used CORAL(A Deductive Database from UW) and expected to find technically rich material in this book, and I was not disappointed. Reading the source code of Microbase (a stripped down version of Minibase) proved very interesting, especially the parser and optimizer parts. This book makes readers to understand difficult but important concepts easier and deeper when they can put their hands on the real database, of course a smaller one, to modify, change, and run it. This kind iteration can be repeated again and again if the reader likes when she or he is the owner of the real database. When the publisher and author requested me to be a beta test site for the book about two years back, I noticed the book written by some one who is at University of Wisconsin, written papers in logic programming. The author and I exchanged email during the first a few months when his book was released. After the book was released two years ago, I saw that a lot of colleges overwhelmingly adopted it immediately for their undergraduate and graduate courses. I like the way the material is presented - keeping the practical implication, real life application in mind all the time, e.g. section 5.7, 5.8 on B-trees, these practical aspects are rarely mentioned in other sources outside searching and sorting field. Query processing topics in Chapter 12, Chapter13 are presented as practical material that keeps the presentation of material interesting rather than making it boring. The best I have liked so far is the coverage of concurrency control, transaction-processing issues in Chapter 17, and Chapter 18. All the things are well tied together. Material is presented in the order that makes user understand the material easier- serializability is introduced right at the beginning, as well as after a whole lot of definitions and theorems. Lot of "not-so-significant" material is made brief such as material in Section 17.8. The above topics I have read are discussed in detail. The complete solutions also available online well complements the text material. In some sense, this book is not for novices. It provides a good whole picture of basic introduction of DBMS, rather than an average introductory textbook. I do have a number of minor suggestions, which is already communicated to the author. A number of examples in this book are in words, not in pictures. Text is somehow not structured perfectly; key words are not highlighted with bold font as you'd expected. You have to do your own work. Examples, some of them, are explained sometimes too briefly. Problems and especially solutions to the problems (on the author's web site) are very good, but they may give some lazier professors a source to copy everything to teach their students. Students may try to access or break the security to access the solutions. This book is not, in some sense, for novices; you'll have to invest a lot of time to understand the subject and sometimes what was implied by the author. I was a little unsatisfied on the lack of depth in certain areas, i.e. buffer management, indexing schemes. B-Trees and Hashing described but not explained thoroughly. Two hashing schemes discussed but neither provided enough information to implement without first solving some hard problems. More information on various locking schemes would be nice. Some areas need revision or reorganization in its future editions, such as referring to terms and concepts before they are introduced; some phrases need further polishing, and there are still some typographic errors. In some discussion, it can make it plainer to be understood. Chapter 9, SQL: THE QUERY LANGUAGE may be discussed in more depth in the next editions. If you teach a database management course in an "high-end" under graduate or graduate program, I suggest that you take a close look into this book. It provides a comprehensive and well-balanced selection of topics (technical, theoretical, and practical), detailed writing, and a clear presentation in some sense. This book is the most detailed one about the implementation of database architecture and internal structure. From what I've seen thus far, it's probably one of the best general-purpose database management textbooks in the market. I believe some people will be able to use materials in their work based on the information in this book. All in all, I was quite satisfied with this book as a first book for hands-on Database Management Systems study.
Rating:
Summary: Incomplete!
Review: The authors have not finished writing this book, so you ought to reconsider purchasing it. Throughout the book, it refers you to the website for the book, which purports to have scripts, files etc for students to use while doing the problems the book provides. However, much of the supplimentary material is MISSING and though myself and other students have tried to contact the authors, we have received absolutely zero response. Frustrating to say the least! Do not buy this book until you can verify that it is in fact COMPLETE.
Rating:
Summary: Incomplete!
Review: The authors have not finished writing this book, so you ought to reconsider purchasing it. Throughout the book, it refers you to the website for the book, which purports to have scripts, files etc for students to use while doing the problems the book provides. However, much of the supplimentary material is MISSING and though myself and other students have tried to contact the authors, we have received absolutely zero response. Frustrating to say the least! Do not buy this book until you can verify that it is in fact COMPLETE.
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