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C. J. Date

An Introduction to Database Systems Paperback – 1 July 2003

by C.J. Date (Author)

40 ratings

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Continuing in the eighth edition, An Introduction to Database Systems provides a comprehensive introduction to the now very large field of database systems by providing a solid grounding in the foundations of database technology while shedding some light on how the field is likely to develop in the future. This new edition has been rewritten and expanded to stay current with database system trends.

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Product details

Paperback: 1024 pages
Publisher: Pearson; 8 edition (1 July 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0321189566
ISBN-13: 978-0321189561
Product Dimensions: 23.1 x 3.3 x 18.9 cm
Customer reviews: 40 customer ratings
Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 354,241 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #623 in Amazon Online Shopping
- #13299 in Education Studies
- #248 in Database Management Systems (Books)

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Continuing in the eighth edition, An Introduction to Database Systems provides a comprehensive introduction to the now very large field of database systems by providing a solid grounding in the foundations of database technology while shedding some light on how the field is likely to develop in the future. This new edition has been rewritten and expanded to stay current with database system trends.

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5 star		46%
4 star		24%
3 star		11%
2 star		8%
1 star		10%

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Maelstrom

Comprehensive Text Book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 July 2013

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This booked is full of valuable information for anyone that wants to get under the bonnet of database systems. It contains some very good chapters on third normal form data modelling. It will also provide you with a very good theoretical underpinning of RDBMS systems. Although its title includes the word 'Introduction' it's not an easy read and contains comprehensive and in-depth information including some mathematical theory.

2 people found this helpful

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Bret McGee

Great

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 2 April 2015

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Old edition bought secondhand but still so many principles apply today.

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Anthony Lauder

Overly dry read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 13 April 2016

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Databases are a dry topic, but this book, unfortunately, makes things even drier. There is quite a lot of material in here, if you can stay away to slog through it. It suffers from being too stiff to be an enjoyable tutorial, yet insufficiently detailed to serve as a reference manual.

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Bobby Dazzler

Slightly too dated for me

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 June 2017

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Felt that this book was too dated and Date has written newer more accessible books which I've purchased. There are things like Calculus and Algebra in it which makes a heavy subject ever more heavy just like the book itself!

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A. Kimber

Great in-depth book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 April 2006

This book is really great.

I purchased it to go along with an rBDMS undergraduate course at University as it was the recommended text. It's easy to see why!

The book is well structured and contains everthing to do with database systems from the logic behind rDBMS systems, to SQL and the failings with SQL.

The only problem with the book is that it can be a bit difficult to read in places if you're not that "into" databases. Although, if you're not into databases, why would you be buying a book on Database Systems!

8 people found this helpful

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Dead Rockstar

It's big but it's not clever

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 May 2008

A beast of a book hindered considerably by over-complexity and forward-referencing. It astounds me that one as versed in relational databases as Date is has delivered a book that reads exactly like the physical layer of a database. We are human, we read in linear and we don't find it cute to be sidetracked for pages by someone else's brain-fart.

I don't doubt the technical information and theory is in this book somewhere, it just needs a competent editor to rip out half the pages and re-order most of it. As an end-user I find this book to be absolutely unfit for purpose, bombarding me with things I didn't ask and confusing me by constantly redefining almost every term used. In fact, it reads like a poorly implemented database - inconsistent, producing irrelevant information in response to legitimate queries and very heavy on processing power while delivering little performance.

I simply cannot recommend this book.

4 people found this helpful

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Mr. D. F. Hagon

A Difficult Read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 January 2008

If you're looking for a book that get will get you up to speed with using databases quickly this isn't it. You need to wade through several chapters before you have even have the basics grasped and there is no 'tutorial' chapter as such. The text is cluttered with reiterations of the same facts at a level of detail entirely inappropriate for an introductory book.

More seriously, coverage of SQL is relegated to final subsections of chapters rather than being directly next to the theory, which would aid those learning SQL. Although, as the author points out, no current SQL implementations are true relational database systems, SQL is still the de facto industry standard so this style is counter-productive. Instead, the author's own Tutorial D language is used throughout. Even worse, Tutorial D is explicitly chosen over the more common mathematical notation for the Relational Algebra and Predicate Calculus, obfuscating the simplicity of the relational model, especially for mathematicians.

Overall the style of language comes across as rambling and ranting. On the plus side, if you have the time to look, all the information is there and there are many good references to the literature.

7 people found this helpful

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Colin MacDonald

Bloated, dry read with too much dross burying the useful nuggets

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 20 July 2010

Date's book is a rambling, smug, supercilious tome, utterly academic in nature and useless to anyone who works for a living.

At every opportunity, Date adds pointless notes informing us that definitions are merely initial abstracts, and will be clarified later, sometimes even adding footnotes to the notes to make it clear that the reader's understanding is insignificant compared to Date's. At times, the book reads rather as though he is having a confused and rather angry conversation with himself. He takes great delight in sneering at flaws in implementations of commercial database management systems: his own record is of course spotless, having bailed out of IBM's database development program and retreated to the safe haven of academia before being in a position to make any mistakes or compromises of his own.

As a practical reference source, it has no parallel in its uselessness. Yes, it is packed full of ancient academic citations, but as a primary source in and of itself, its sheer size and meandering nature makes it hard to find anything in a useful timescale. It contains information that is far beyond anything that a DBA will ever need to know, while at the same time being too abstract to form a guide to creating a DBMS from scratch. At best, it could give a student a grounding in database principles in preparation for the far greater challenge of actually producing and supporting a working DBMS.

However, the past decade has seen the rise of several robust, mature open source RDBMsen. They now form the primary - and completely free - reference source for those who wish actually to enter the world of DMBS development. A line of concrete code is worth at least a page of Date's theoretical abstracts. Why read about how a DMBS works when you can download one and see for yourself?

This is a book whose time has long since passed. It does still makes a handy doorstop, I grant.

6 people found this helpful

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Max Vadukul

The 2006 Indian Edition has destroyed a Masterpiece!

Reviewed in India on 17 August 2017

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I've read C. J. Date's 2004 book, but not an Indian edition. That was long time back. The book is brilliant and it explains the concepts clearly with examples. Since I misplaced the book, I thought of buying a new one to refresh myself.
The new book, 2006 version, the Indian edition shows two additional writers, A. Kannan and S. Swamynathan. These two free loaders have changed examples in the book with impunity and without coherence. The text do not match the example.
On the original version, C. J. Date has taken great care to maintain a flow. Sadly, the Indian edition lacks it.
I would highly recommend the C. J. Date's original book where he is the sole author.
The Indian version has two imposters who has screwed the book.

5 people found this helpful

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Chandrabhatta Sriram

Where can we find all the DBMS concepts? This is THE BOOK for DB Systems.

Reviewed in India on 2 November 2018

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I've seen that many people like the DB Book written by Korth, Silberschatz & Sudarshan. But this book has greater in-depth explanations and some more advanced topics compared to that book.

Since this book is an Indian Edition, the paper quality is not amazing, but the content is.

I would definitely recommend anyone to buy this book to learn about DBMS concepts for anyone (Beginner, Intermediate or Expert).

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Krishna

Truly Amazing

Reviewed in India on 9 September 2016

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This is a great book. I'm on chapter 5 right now and I can say this is one of the best technical books I have ever read. The author clarifies concepts with such great detail that you can literally visualise things happening.

I think this book is a must read for someone who is serious about studying databases.

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Mit

Five Stars

Reviewed in India on 2 May 2018

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Good

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Ananthapadmanabhan

Not helpful

Reviewed in India on 2 August 2019

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Does not cover the required syllabus.

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Satyam

Dbms

Reviewed in India on 10 November 2019

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Book was torn

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Jeong Seong Yeop

satisfied.

Reviewed in Canada on 7 September 2017

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looks new and clean. satisfied.

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Amazon Customer

Excellent

Reviewed in India on 16 August 2019

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Perfectly

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Riad Kerbache

Five Stars

Reviewed in Canada on 6 August 2015

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The Book is a reference in term of Databases concepts and theory

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Dr. T. MEYYAPPAN

DBMS BY C.J.DATE A GOOD BOOK

Reviewed in India on 11 February 2017

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Yes. It is a good book. Very useful to students and mentors.

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Alex

Très bon achat

Reviewed in France on 31 December 2018

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Une référence dans le domaine. Et livre expédié dans d’excellentes conditions

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Todd Ebert

the database practitioner's bible

Reviewed in the United States on 17 August 2005

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I suppose there are two potential audiences for an introductory database book. The first audience consists of developers who need to know the very basics about databases to design and implement a database computer application. For that group I would recommend Date's book, but only upon having sufficient "computer science maturity": i.e. having taken one year of programming, and possibly a course in discrete mathematics and/or data structures and algorithms. Without this maturity much of what Date writes will be very hard to appreciate if not comprehend. True, he gives numerous examples that are quite understandable, but he also spends many paragraphs discussing somewhat abstract issues to the novice that will make him or her want to skip ahead. A good example of this is the notion of thinking of a table as the current value of a relvar, or the importance of closure in the relational algebra. The paragraphs he spends on these subtle importances will frustrate the uninitiated reader.

For someone who does not believe that he or she has the maturity to handle this book, and simply wants to develop an application that requires a database, I would recommend buying a more "down-to-earth" book possibly covering the RDMS that will be used. For example, if it is MySQL, then one might want to purchase

Welling's "MySQL Tutorial" (ISBN: 0672325845) for a much gentler and user-friendly introduction (or better yet the PHP and MySQL web development book if a web application is desired).

The other audience for this book are the professionals who are in charge of managing a database and/or using a database server for an industrial-strength application. In this case, Date's book is mandatory reading. May be not all of it, but certainly Parts I-IV. Reading these parts will give the professional the needed perspective on all the considerations required for successfully using or managing a database system.

In the world of database systems, Chris Date is one of the few authors who understands the importance of every minute detail involved with successfully using and managing databases. He proves that in this book, in a style that is not only academic but also quite useful and practical (especially his chapters on the relational algebra and calculus).

27 people found this helpful

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Forrest

Will need to update this review after I finish reading

Reviewed in the United States on 2 June 2015

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I haven't read the whole thing by far (still on chapter 3), and I will wind up updating this review in the future, but all in all, this is a great book. Date's method of writing is kind of indirect, and he wastes a lot of time talking about erroneous information. But he makes up for it with snarky but informative jokes and a solid understanding of how things work.

One person found this helpful

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Estefano Palacios Topic

Underrated, no seriously

Reviewed in the United States on 30 October 2010

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This book is excellent and it is very clearly written. English is my second language (I live in Ecuador for crying out loud, I don't even get to practice my English that often), and I can read the book without pain or suffering of any kind. Yes it is huge. Yes, for some of you it might be too much theory. But you will understand every aspect of data base systems: Date's pedagogy and methodology is just that brilliant. Plus you'll get your hands dirty with some interesting topics that Mr. Date has decided to include, for example: Distributed Databases, Relational Calculus (not incredibly necessary as Relational Algebra, but it is nice to have a reference to go to when need arrives), Security and Object Databases.

The author may seem pretentious when he uses Latin phrases or words like: a fortiori, per se, a priori, mutatis mutandis, etc. But who doesn't really know this? And if you don't, Google it up and you'll get the result in seconds (I had to Google a fortiori). It just doesn't seem to be that much a deal, at least not to give the book a mere one star, when it is clearly a classic and an incredible demonstration of how textbooks should be written. Another reviewer said that there was little content. I just can't believe this, seriously. For a book that boast "introduction" on its title, it goes way beyond introductions in my opinion (compare this book against others that have nothing to say about the TransRelational model!). If you know Database Systems and the relational model and the theory behind it, you shouldn't be reading any introduction books on the topic (or reviewing them like they should do something else other than introducing the subject). In my opinion, any serious computer scientist or professional IT should read this book and keep it close at hand. But that is just my judgment.

*sigh* I can't believe this book has an average of 3.5 starts. I really can't.

19 people found this helpful

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Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA

Conceptual learning at its best

Reviewed in the United States on 14 May 2014

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Christopher J Date is the classic text in databases. A much needed basis in conceptual data knowledge in times of NoSQL and other fads.

5 people found this helpful

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