Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 24 Hours

Sams Teach Yourself Series

by Ryan K. Stephens, Ron Plew

Written by college instructors, Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 24 Hours quickly teaches beginning- to intermediate-level SQL users how to create, store, access and manipulate data using a proven step-by-step format that teaches SQL by example. This book contains a thorough explanation of database concepts, SQL procedures, and low-level programming, enabling readers to gain an understanding of the whys as well as the hows behind SQL. This book presents complete code listings and output, followed with analysis that explains exactly what the listings are doing. These practical code examples can be incorporated easily by the reader into other projects. Coverage includes SQL, as well as SQL in an enterprise setting and on the Web and Intranet. Authors Ryan Stephens and Ronald Plew are President and Vice President of Perpetual Technologies, Inc., where their duties include Oracle database administration and consulting and Oracle, SQL, and UNIX training. They have both been teaching at the collegiate level for over three years as adjunct professors at Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis. Both are Oracle Certified Professionals, having specialized in Oracle and UNIX for more than 10 years each.

Genres: Nonfiction, Programming, Reference, Computer Science, Technology, Technical, Computers

440 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[Plesz Roland · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hard to define whom this book I would recommend to. For someone who is completely new to the topic, some part of it would be challenging or even confusing. If you already know the basics, then most of it will be boring for you.

What I used it for is to check, if I really have covered "the basics". As an autodidact SQL learner it was helpful to see some kind of structure.

Even without reading another beginner SQL books I am sure you can easily find a better one.

[Jakub · Rating 3 out of 5]

The books is pretty average. If you're totally new to SQL, it will confuse you on every other page. The structure is not so clear, the code samples should have some more distinctive formatting, instead they're visually blending with the text.
What's unforgivable, however, are the errors in some examples. Even though I was able to spot some of them, it makes you wonder how many you didn't notice.

[Milos Bijelic · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fantastic, easy to follow and concise intro to SQL

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you don’t already have a basic grasp of SQL, this book won’t help much. If you do, it will probably only frustrate you. How have they made it to a sixth edition with this many errors!?
I borrowed it free from my library, and I still feel ripped off. I did learn a few things as a very raw beginner, but mostly it was by reading these guys’ attempted explanation and thinking “that doesn’t even make sense” or “what the hell are they trying to show me here?” and going off to experiment on my own. Half the time I came back to make sure I hadn’t missed or misread something and confirmed that there was indeed a mistake or omission in the text ... maybe that was their intention all along? No, I’m pretty sure they’re just sloppy hack authors.

[Greg Sutton · Rating 2 out of 5]

Overall I would not recommend this book. As a database administrator of 10 years and a course instructor, I considered this book for my sql course. The technical information was good and presented a good intro to the basics. However, the book contained lots of errors that made the assignments and examples difficult to follow. It seems as though the book had been updated to use new source code and new examples but lots of references to old code were not replaced. It was very confusing and frustrating. The editors need to go back through the book and fix the mistakes. It would be a decent book for beginners if they fixed them.

[D · Rating 1 out of 5]

The book tells the reader to go to Appendix D to get the CREATE statements to create the tables needed to use the remainder of the book. Appendix D does not contain that information nor does anywhere else that I can find. All reviews on Amazon also say the same thing.

It would be nice to be able to use this book.

[Ani · Rating 3 out of 5]

I chose to study this book for my lab examination on SQL. It's suitable for people who already know something about SQL. I wouldn't recommend it to beginners, because it doesn't have many examples and some of them are wrong.

[Ahmed Al-Graihy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't recommend this book for developer or beginners...

Also the examples in this books contains unacceptable errors!

[Fabian Rodriguez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is my first book about SQL, So I think is a really good book to start learning.