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Easy SQL Learning for Students and Newbies

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Here's an interesting book review written by Jason Cheng. This is in addition to our initial introduction about this book.

Another book from O�Reilly Media Inc., which they entitled: �A Pain-Free Introduction to SQL for Database Developers & Administrators � Learning SQL� (ISBN: 0596007272, O'Reilly Media Inc., US$34.95, Paperback, 289pp, September 2005) written by Alan Beaulieu, was made to enlighten the readers� mind that SQL is not as complex as how it looks, but as easy as how the book will explain it you. The book itself described what SQL is all about, its history, the basics, tied up with plenty of exercises and 13 chapters to build up the reader�s knowledge of using SQL at such learning tempo. The contents contain technical examples at the latter chapters, but the first 3 chapters will clearly explain the basics for the readers to go through the contents without any difficulty. Any readers, especially the youth can find the book easily to be understood in such a clear manner.        

The book�s contents have plenty of valuable information about the SQL history. Me and my classmates who had read the book didn�t even know that it was just meant to be pronounced as �Sequel� (We just pronounce it as Es-Q-EL), not some sort of abbreviation nor acronym. There were also stanzas in the preface of the book that clearly expounded the reasons for me to learn from this book, apply the knowledge that I will learn from its contents, and finish it right away.

Here�s one stanza that threw a king-sized rock to my forehead: �If you are going to work with relational database, whether you are writing applications, performing administrative tasks, or generating reports, you will need to know how to interact with the data in your database. Even if you are using a tool that generates SQL for you, such as a reporting tool, there may be times when you need to bypass the automatic generation feature and write your own statements,� as it was expounded in the preface. The book made me realize that relying on an SQL generator (like what I�ve been doing before) might contain statements that we really don�t require. For instance, we want to make a complex database which contains all the details needed for our website. Then we had an idea wherein we wanted to make our own indicator that will search for such value or data inside the complex database structure, problems in searching for that data that we require might occur because of the limited features of that SQL generator. The book covered PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle Database, IBM DB2, Sybase Adaptive Server, and especially MySQL. But the ANSI SQL standards were the ones prioritized by the book, since it is used all through out any kind of SQL databases.

As a college student, I had just learned all the details about SQL in just 5 days by reading this book. The book is very cost-effective, because I had hastily understood the basic SQL commands, and became conscious on how did my SQL generator do its stuffs (like creating database tables, sorting the details, correction of the details, making a mark on a specific data in just one-click-of-a-button). These were all explained by the book. Another thing that I�ve learned from this book was the basic commands. I had found out how these commands work, and it�s because of these emphasized details indicated in chapter one. With those significant details, the jigsaw-puzzle like predefined functions, along with its details that I had encountered in the book when I scanned its contents became a little easier for me to identify with. Here�s one example:

CREATE TABLE corporation
(corp_id SMALLINT,
Name VARCHAR(30),
CONSTRAINT pk_corporation PRIMARY KEY (corp_id)
);�

It looks creepy? For people who are greenhorns to SQL, yes. But then, the explanations will immediately catch up right after this code to help us understand how the basic command CREATE TABLE works:

This statement creates a table with two columns, corp_id and name, with the corp_id column identified as the primary key for the table.

The book itself will immediately answer your questions after a confusing sample code. Thus, its brilliant step-by-step system of teaching and explaining provides the basic foundation of its accuracy for making the readers be knowledgeable of the contents with a concrete understanding of each lesson. I know that the example isn�t that much confusing for those who know SQL, but I�m telling you that the way how you�ve understand this simple code will also be the way how the book will explain the complex codes to you. Not only that this book has plenty of bounded and related details which provide clear explanations on how the codes work, but the exercises that I had found at every end of each chapter (Starting from chapter 3 onwards) helped me a lot on applying the knowledge that I had just acquired immediately, and I think that it would be better if I would be able to maximize the book�s valuable contents even more if it has additional optional and complicated exercises (or simply bonus exercises) in each chapter. So that I can have an option to choose from those exercises to completely apply all of the knowledge that can be acquired from this book.

Besides the information about the SQL codes, schemas and other functions, the way he explains the contents gives artistry to his way of pointing out the important details and facts. The title itself fitted its contents, fulfilled my needs, and I recommend this book to every reader who wants to learn SQL in a seamless approach. I did not require any references because there weren�t any perplexities at all.

But is the book way above other SQL learning books? I would say that this book applies to all readers to wants to learn SQL, many of my classmates are interested and I would really wanted to recommend this as a book for teaching us SQL in our campus here at MAPUA Makati, Philippines. And for those who know SQL well, they might want to try out the exercises found in the book. Nevertheless, it�s too impractical to do that though. As for programmers/ application developers, they may want to integrate the seamless database construction of SQL to their applications, if ever they aren�t familiar about SQL. I�m very glad that I can manually make own SQL conditions/functions/statements with ease and integrate these codes into my very own programmed game. So all in all, what�s important for me is that the book did its job, like I really felt that the author was actually teaching me personally because of his brilliant teaching skills.

But is there anything wrong with the book? Hmmm ... As I usually wish, I hope books with this kind of contents are portable (I don�t want to keep this in my locker or else my friends who have a duplicate might get it without my permission). But the book itself is already ok.



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