The perfect reference for programmers, administrators, or Web designers who are new to database development and are uncertain as to how to design and structure a database efficiently
Shows how to design and implement robust, scalable databases on any of the major relational database management systems, including Access, SQL Server, IBM DB2, MySQL, and Oracle
Covers all the key database design steps including modeling, normalization, SQL, denormalization, object-modeling, data warehousing, and performance
Provides plenty of real-world examples and a complete beginning-to-end case study of creating a database that includes the analysis and planning, tables and data structures, business rules, and hardware requirements
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Good next-step in growth of understanding
I found this to be a good practical growth step in understanding database design. He explains the basics and steps into good illustrations. The book is not focused on any one db vendor. The second half of the book is a case study.
Rating: - Very, *very* poorly written book
This book is horribly written. The English here is perhaps the worst in any published work that I have ever seen -- it feels like the effort of a not particulary bright ESL student. No effort at confusing the reader has been spared, and often what should be a simple subject-verb-object statement has been twisted and gnarled and randomly punctuated so its meaning can only be gleaned by context, careful repeated readings, and a few drops of Jolt in the eyes. There are so many errors that should have ... Read More
Rating: - For Beginners Only
Potential readers should pay attention to the title -- this is definitely a beginner's book. However, it's among one of the better intro texts on databases on the market.
Overall, the guidance provided by this book is sufficient. Experienced readers will find some valuable knowledge, but can probably skip the case study.
The section on normalization, while not 100% accurate, includes meaningful visuals that help explain normalization in an approachable way.
Rating: - Anyone considering to learn database programming should read this book.
The following is an unaltered email I sent to Gavin Powell. I sent it because before I read his book about a year ago, I programmed only front end code and it has not only helped me understand what I was dealing with when sending / receiving data between client and server, but enabled me to design a smart MySQL database that otherwise would have been over normalized, therefore saving myself hours and hours of writing and testing join queries.
So I wanted to thank him.
I'm posting the email ... Read More
Rating: - Experience
In my experienced, the things that this author repeats over and over again are the most common mistakes in data modeling. I have seen over normalization in over 27 projects in my 15 years of experience. The author is simply trying to make sure that data modelers don't make these same mistakes again. For example, the most common performance problem with most relational databases is over normalization. That means that an application developer may have to do dozens of joins to produce the resulting data. ... Read More
- Good next-step in growth of understanding
- Very, *very* poorly written book
- For Beginners Only
- Anyone considering to learn database programming should read this book. 
