Rating:  - Another winner in the Head First series
This book takes a not-too-difficult but oh-so-dry subject and actually makes it interesting. The Head First series has tackled subjects in a similar fashion - Java, HTML, and design patterns, for example. However, being the geek that I am I actually find these subjects interesting, but just needed some books where I could brush up quickly and easily. The subject of databases and SQL, however, is a subject where the reading material can easily made into a cure for insomnia. Not so in this case. The author gets this problem. In fact chapter one actually has as a goal "How do you trick your brain into thinking that your life actually depends on SQL?". The book is not just about writing new databases, but about maintaining and changing old ones. It also talks about working with multiple tables and how to connect those tables with diagrams that will stick with you. It shows you how to do this in a manner that is interesting with the series' usual crossword puzzles, fake interviews and conversations, and Q&A sessions. Even if you think you know SQL, I can't think of a better book for brushing up if you've been away from the subject for awhile. This is true not only because the book covers all of the basics and even some more advanced topics, but because if you need to get up to speed in a short period of time this is one of the few books on the subject that will not put you to sleep.
Rating:  - SQL made interesting
I should probably mention up front that I am not really a member of the demographic that this book was written for (that being the fairly new students to relational database theory), but I liked this book nonetheless. What really endears the book to me, and in fact, the entire Head First series, is the geek humor that the author sprinkles liberally throughout the book. Wordplay, funny photo captions, and entertaining exercises abound to make sure that the difficult task of teaching something as dry as an introduction to SQL is as enjoyable and down-right entertaining as possible.
If you are familiar with other books in the Head First series, then you pretty much know what you are in for with this book. If you are not familiar with this series (and honestly, if not then why aren't you?) then you are in for somewhat of a different experience than your typical beginner level technical book. For starters, the book uses lots of visuals and graphics to explain things. If the topic is learning how a select statement works, then the author hits you with building a dating service to illustrate the points. If the difference between sub-selects and outer joins is the topic, then the author drags both out onto the metaphorical stage to have a debate over why you should use one or the other. All of these implements, from outlandish scenarios to anthropomorphic database constructs are cleverly woven together to make sure that the information the author is presenting sticks to your grey matter. If you do the many and varied exercises in each chapter, then you really can learn this stuff and have a fun time doing it.
The book doesn't assume that you have had any real experience with databases and it even has a chapter explaining why you would want to use a database in the first place. The content of the book also stays away from any database -specific information and sticks to generic SQL commonalities: selects, alter tables, updates, deletes, where-clauses, joins, sub-selects, aggregate functions, ordering, etc. Constraints, views, and some rudimentary security concerns are touched on, but not to any great degree.
The appendices are really a collection of esoteric topics that he author
calls `left-overs'. There is a quick section on PHP (which seems a little out of place in such a general SQL programming book), GUI tools for databases, a list of reserved words, some additional information on data types, etc. There is a larger section for how to download and install a MySQL database, which is as close as the book comes to endorsing one database vendor.
As with most books, there are a few minor things that bothered me about this book in particular, and about the Head First series as a whole. For starters, the pictures and glyphs that the book uses get somewhat redundant after the first few times that you see them. Chapter after chapter, you see the same actors in the same or slightly different poses. In many cases, the only difference seems to be the text in the dialog bubbles that are attached to the portraits. I joked with a colleague of mine that we should have a caption contest and write our own dialog for a good number of the examples in the book. This seems to be a systemic problem with the series itself rather than a problem with Head First SQL exclusively, because I own a number of the other books in the series and they also use many of the same graphics and photos and actors in those books. Perhaps, just perhaps, it is a fiendishly devised mnemonic device to see the same images time and time again, but it strikes me as a tad redundant and a little boring after seeing the same images used to explain different topics.
In the final analysis of the book, I have to recommend this book to anyone who may be just starting out on learning SQL programming. Don't expect this book to be the last book you will need to purchase on the subject if you are aiming to be a DBA, or even an enterprise developer, but it should definitely be the first one you buy.
Rating: - Head First Strikes Again
This book, like the others in the series, is an impressive piece of work. SQL can be pretty dry, so spicing it up in using the Head First motif definitely pays off.
Even though I gave it 5 stars, I sometimes thought too many pages were spent (wasted?) injecting humor into the learning process. Simply stating facts is not necessarily a bad way to teach soemthing. O'Reilly's "Learning SQL" by Alan Beaulieu goes that route and does a wonderful job explaining SQL - and in far fewer pages. (Granted, Head First pages are anything but dense, so total page count can be misleading.)
My only other gripe is that indexing - which I consider to be pretty darn important - was relegated to 1/2 page of text in the "Leftovers" section.
Rating: - Any book on SQL whose style and content makes it possible for me to read and reread it in the last 24 hours deserves 5 Stars.
As a beginning/intermediate Ruby/Rails programmer I have been waiting for this book to fill in that big SQL hole in my knowledge base.
Even though Rails abstracts much of the underlying SQL code through its ORM, Head First SQL answers many questions I had about SQL in an entertaining way.
Before this book my SQL knowledge could be summed up in two lines.
mysqladmin -uroot create abc_development
and
localhost/phpmyadmin
During a 24 hour marathon session with lots of Red Bull and Coffee the book has switched on the big SQL light in my head now.
For this Ruby/Rails programmer chapter 7 on Multi-Table Database Design, and chapter 12 on Security was worth the price of admission alone.
The Author's implementation of the Head First style is entertaining enough to actually make Head First SQL an enjoyable thing to study rather than sitting on my shelf with the other 3 SQL books that I was hoping to learn through osmosis as they can be a bit dry.
Any book on SQL whose style and content makes it possible for me to read and reread in the last 24 hours deserves 5 Stars.
Rating: - you must have in your Books Shelf
Before i review this book i would say this book for beginners only.
this book is strongly start learning for the Structures Query Language , if you use any Database management system such as Microsoft SQL server,Oracle,Mysql,Microsoft Access,or any other ,this book is compatible with you .
the book contains these chapters :
Chapter 1-data and tables .
Chapter 2-The SELECT Statement.
Chapter 3-DELETE and UPDATE.
Chapter 4-smart table design.
Chapter 5-ALTER.
Chapter 6-Advanced select.
Chapter 7-Multi-table database design.
Chapter 8-joins and multi-tables operations .
Chapter 9-sub queries.
Chapter 10-Outer Joins, self joins, and unions.
Chapter 11-Constraints, views, and Transactions.
Chapter 12-security.
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