Amazon.co.uk Review
Although Celko denies that the book is about database theory, he often alludes to theory to buttress his practical points. This title is not for novices, as the author points out. Instead its intended audience is SQL programmers with at least a year's experience. The book maintains a fine balance between technical discussion and practical explanation--picking hot topics and offering advice on a wide range of subjects.
The book uses ANSI SQL-89 as its baseline standard, with some mention of SQL-92 features. However, it does not focus on any commercial product but rather zeroes in on the SQL language. Celko covers all aspects of database design, optimisation and manipulation, with easy-to-understand explanations of key issues such as why not to use too many nulls, how to use practical normalisation and how to optimise queries.
This insightful text is manna for all the day-to-day SQL coders banging their heads over the language's subtle challenges. --Stephen W.Plain
Topics covered:
Database design and normalisation, SQL data types, querying, grouping, set operations, optimisation, data scaling and encoding.
