Joe Celko's SQL for Smarties: Advanced SQL Programming (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems) [Paperback]

In the SQL database community, Joe Celko is a well-known columnist and purveyor of valuable insights. In Joe Celko's SQL for Smarties: Advanced SQL Programming, he picks up where basic SQL training and experience leaves many database professionals and offers tips, techniques and explanations that help readers extend their capabilities to top-tier SQL programming.

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

"If you work with SQL in any way, shape, or form, the most recent edition of Joe Celko's SQL for Smarties needs to be on your bookshelf!"--Data Technology Today Blog --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

"SQL for Smarties" was hailed as the first book devoted explicitly to the advanced techniques you need to transform yourself into an expert SQL programmer. Now, in this fully updated second edition, SQL mastermind Joe Celko keeps you moving forward, using his entertaining, conversational style to teach you the best solutions to old and new challenges and to convey the way you need to think if you really want to get the most out of your SQL programming efforts. Inside, logic- and set-based analyses replace the traditional, procedural approach to problem-solving, helping you make the conceptual leap that separates an SQL guru from the rest of the pack. As you catch on to Celko's approach, you'll devour what he has to say about some of SQL's toughest topics: how aggregate functions really work, the best way to work with NULLs, how and why to fake array structures, and much more. This book gives special emphasis to SQL-92 and product-independent techniques that let you optimize performance or achieve highly specialized behavior, regardless of the RDBMS with which you work. If you're serious about SQL, you won't let SQL for Smarties out of your sight. This book presents all-new war stories that give you insight into real-world SQL programming challenges. It continues to cover SQL-89 but focuses heavily on the SQL-92 standard. It offers still more undocumented tips for working around system deficiencies. It teaches scores of advanced techniques that can be used with any product, in any SQL environment. It offers expert advice from a noted SQL authority and award-winning columnist.

Joe Celko is a noted consultant, lecturer, teacher, and one of the most-read SQL authors in the world. He is well known for his ten years of service on the ANSI SQL standards committee, his dependable help on assorted SQL newsgroups, his column in Intelligent Enterprise (which won several Reader's Choice Awards), and the war stories he tells to provide real-world insights into SQL programming. His best-selling books include Joe Celko's SQL for Smarties: Advanced SQL Programming, Joe Celko's SQL Puzzles and Answers, Joe Celko's Trees and Hierarchies in SQL for Smarties, and Joe Celko's SQL Style, all published by Morgan Kaufmann.