.

This book is the most robust book I have found for cross-platform SQL references.

I have yet to have a design or functional issue that was not covered in the book.

As a C++ programmer that does not know C# or VB I found this book very helpful in conjunction with a book specific to the data base I was writting for.
This book will get you started on generic quiries and a book written on your specific data base will fill in the gaps for you. As mentioned in other reviews this book is not up to date on current standards, but as a primer book which this obviously is, standards can be left to a more case specific book.
But as I just stated the real value that I found in this book was in the programming with SQL section, if you do not know C# or VB and you are trying to write code that pulls or updates data to an SQL data base, good luck doing it without this book, I was able to find virtually no other book written for SQL with C or C++. I got my programming bit from this book, and more efficient data base specific look ups and append commands from another, and all the programs I have written thus far work flawlessly. So for that one section alone this book gets five stars.

Good book if you are 100% new to SQL and the concept of queries. Not good if you're looking for a more specific language techniques for particular brands of sql. This book serves well as a nice thick primer before moving on to a more product specific topics.

Good book if you are 100% new to SQL and the concept of queries. Not good if you're looking for a more specific language techniques for particular brands of sql. This book serves well as a nice thick primer before moving on to a more product specific topics.

The book covers a lot of material but, the book's index is far from complete.

Although the book proports to describe both DB2 and other databases, facts such as the important difference between Numeric and Decimal types in DB2 are omitted.

The book covers a lot of material but, the book's index is far from complete.

Although the book proports to describe both DB2 and other databases, facts such as the important difference between Numeric and Decimal types in DB2 are omitted.

This book, with no doubt, is easy to understand. It provides extensive coverage of the query language with excellent examples.

If you're a newbie to the SQL subject - this is book is a good choice to start with because it will guide you through the fundamentals of SQL. BUT!!!! If you need to design a database schema you will probably want to consult a different book (that place major emphasis on database modeling and normalization - those topics are not covered extensively)

Simple, practical and to the point. 4 Starts!

This book, with no doubt, is easy to understand. It provides extensive coverage of the query language with excellent examples.

If you're a newbie to the SQL subject - this is book is a good choice to start with because it will guide you through the fundamentals of SQL. BUT!!!! If you need to design a database schema you will probably want to consult a different book (that place major emphasis on database modeling and normalization - those topics are not covered extensively)

Simple, practical and to the point. 4 Starts!

The explanations are presented in conversational language. This made it difficult for me to understand some of the concepts. I had to "translate" the explanations into more precise and concise language based on concepts familiar to programmers before I could grasp the ideas with confidence (assuming my translations are correct).

I purchased this book to brush up on SQL programming that I had done in my previous career. The book offers a CD with versions of databases two or tree revisions back, most of which can be obtained free online anyway. NO database creation scripts, nor sample data is offered on the CD or on the publisher's website. You have to HAND TYPE it all in yourself. Even the sample data in the back of the book is incorrect. After hand typing in all this information, I created the sample queries while reading along in the book. The result sets in the book have no logical order. If a SELECT statement does not include an ORDER BY clause, the result should be in primary key order (if the PK is included in the SELECT clause) Their results in the book are arbitrarily ordered, so comparing my results to theirs is very tedious, matching up each line to ensure I received the same result. I find this very bothersome to a text on relational databases, whose purpose is to put data in logical order. The text itself does handle relational database concepts and the use of SQL to retrieve and manipulate the data well, but the examples and lack of source code warrant the two stars. I would suggest looking elsewhere for a SQL book.

I purchased this book to brush up on SQL programming that I had done in my previous career. The book offers a CD with versions of databases two or tree revisions back, most of which can be obtained free online anyway. NO database creation scripts, nor sample data is offered on the CD or on the publisher's website. You have to HAND TYPE it all in yourself. Even the sample data in the back of the book is incorrect. After hand typing in all this information, I created the sample queries while reading along in the book. The result sets in the book have no logical order. If a SELECT statement does not include an ORDER BY clause, the result should be in primary key order (if the PK is included in the SELECT clause) Their results in the book are arbitrarily ordered, so comparing my results to theirs is very tedious, matching up each line to ensure I received the same result. I find this very bothersome to a text on relational databases, whose purpose is to put data in logical order. The text itself does handle relational database concepts and the use of SQL to retrieve and manipulate the data well, but the examples and lack of source code warrant the two stars. I would suggest looking elsewhere for a SQL book.

"Complete reference" - I thought this would describe/explain the SQL code that I need to use in my job. This book sits on my desk at work - for SQL code, I get it from the internet.

If you aim to be a DBA the first thing you should do , before reading a specific DB Vendor book, is to read something about general database aspects like data integrity, security, performance etc.
This one does the job. After reading the book I was quickly able to dive into Oracle ( and now a DBA ).
But ( a commercial trick ) the book doesn't provide ( as promised in cover ) is detailed information on every main DB brand. But we all know this is not possible within a book, even at this size.
Tough, who cares?

This book need a re-write to bring it up to the latest SQL standards. If you are still using Pre-SQL92 systems, this book is a pretty good reference.

However, it leaves out important new information such as the new JOIN syntax.

I recommend you check other texts to ensure this is the *one* that you want.

Excellent book, I bought it simply because I wanted to have a reference book for SQL syntax. Don't expect this book to teach you about normal forms and whatnot, it covers the ANSI SQL standard (even SQL2) only, thereby, you'd need to pick up a book on normalization.

A note to people starting with databases: this book covers SQL syntax, it contains evaluation versions of SQL Server, DB2, and etc. It doesn't cover the actual DBMS themselves, there are books reserved for that. Lastly, before you buy this book, know the theories of relational database design such as normalization, the ideology behind relational database design is fundamental to database design, administration, and maintenance.

This book is, at the same time, too complete and not complete enough. The entire back half of it deals with things I'll never need, but when it came time to learn the functions, there was hardly any discussion. I've noted that this is the major gripe of other people as well.

Still, it's many, many, many simple examples are very helpful to a novice/intermediate user such as myself, and I've found it easy to follow because of them.

The book is merely a re-package of the first edition; and what makes things worse - none of the errors of the first one were ever fixed:(it still claims, for instance that Oracle's stored procedures params must be declared as VARCHAR(10) - i.e. it must be sized; such syntax could not possibly compile),some examples do not compile..... Appendix shows installation of Informix,DB2 UDB 5.2, Oracle 8 and MS SQL Server 7.0 - from the first edition,while this second edition's disk includes only SQL Server 2000, DB2 7.1 and MySQL; this had undermined my trust in the "up-to-date content", claimed by the preface and the cover. As in the previous edition, it concentrates on the standard SQL, much of which has nothing to do with implementations (e.g. DOMAIN keyword). Chapter on functions lists 7, 9 (?)functions - out of hundreds implemented by RDBMS!

To be true, the book was spiced up with several new chapters on XML, EJB etc - a mile wide, an inch deep in coverage...I'd be better off buying separate books on the subject. I wish I could return it. If you cannot avoid it - buy the first edition and save tens of dollars; or - better yet - look for a different book.

Covers a lot of topics but only at the most basic level. I was particularly interested in complex DML statements such as updating one section of a Table based on data contained in the latest entries. I got more information from the Transact-SQL help screens from Microsoft. I suppose this would be a useful introduction for someone who new absolutely nothing about the topic, but as a professional reference it was a waste of money.

I'm the next person to truly recommend this book. Buy it, keep it and take care of it. You'll always have a peek at it, because who can really remember everything about SQL?

The best bit about the book is that it is really written using Standard SQL (ANSI). (It does supply some additional information about other specific SQL language differences)

This is one of those books I'd loved to have had during the long time-consuming quest of learning SQL. It would have saved tons of time and a lot of frustration.

I am intermediate with SQL and have to say that this book has examples for any and every command that you can think of. Now I'm not sure if everything is in there because it is such a huge book but I wouldn't doubt it, it explains basics to Advanced with good examples.
I think that everyone should have this as a reference if you want something that has most of what you might need when looking up SQL