Customer Rating: 
Summary: Excellent SQL Reference
Comment: Most of the titles in the Visual Quickstart Guide series that I've acquired have been very useful and "SQL" by Chris Fehily is no exception. I use SQL relatively rarely and this book is an excellent reference and refresher when I need a fast immersion in SQL.
The Visual Quickstart Guides teach by - you guessed it - visual examples and this is no exception. Fehily's writing style is spare and direct with few wasted words. There is a somewhat generalized introduction to the nature of SQL. The Introduction is actually a model of what such a chapter should be like. It is direct, to the point and covers the major things, in general, that you need to know about SQL.
He then moves deeper into the basics of SQL before advancing on basic SQL operations, such as retrieving data from a table, operators and functions, summarizing and grouping data and so on. Reading this book alone will not make you an expert SQL programmer, but it will certainly help you do more than muddle through basic SQL operations, which generally are all you need.
I've had this book on my shelf for a long time and, as I said, when the need for me to deal with SQL arises, it's the first reference I pick up.
Jerry
Customer Rating:
Summary: A very good SQL referance book
Comment: SQL Second edition,
The book starts out fairly basic by covering what a DBMS is and what a forward slash versus a back slash means in terms of file path and how they relate to different operating systems. From there you get into the fundamentals of database building. From there you get into the command line utility (still an important function technology).
The meat of the book really starts in chapter 2 where you will learn about relational databases and what a key is. Primary keys are essential in the relational database. You will also learn about tables and their importance.
Chapter 3 you are back to the basics of SQL. You will learn more about syntax and how to decipher common syntax errors. Data types are also covered to some extent.
Chapter 4 is all about tables, how to construct them, keep them clean, filtering them, sort them and how to retrieve the information you are looking for. You will learn the basics of conditional statements.
Chapter 5 Lets have some fun with operators (no not the kind that you talk to on the phone but the kind you build using expressions to extract information also known as the function. Creating strings; who thought it could be so much fun. In this chapter we also get top create, change and clean up strings and their friends from next door the substrings.
Chapter 6 It's party time with Aggregate functions and expressions. While were at it we can summarize some data using statistics and aggregate values. While were at it we can filter a little more.
Chapter 7 Lets do some JOINing. Here we learn about creating table aliases and then joining the tables. The importance of the operator WHERE instead of JOIN syntax. And then there's the CROSS JOIN lurking in the background just waiting to return all possible combinations of rows between two tables. This chapter covers many different JOIN syntax's'
Chapter 8 The child to the query also known as the sub querie (inner query of an outer query, how sub queries work with other sub queries, comparing sub queries. ) This chapter is all about sub queries
Chapter 9 Lets join a UNION of sorts. Not the dues paying kind but the kind the compares the results with queries. You can learn how to create a EXCEPT operator for finding differences in rows of the queries that you are combining.
In chapter 10 we learn about INSERTing, DELETE(ing), UPDATE(ing) it's all about the rows in tables and using syntax to alter them.
Chapter 11 Is about creating tables, working with Nulls, specifying values, specifying keys.
Chapter 12 we learn about indexes, creating them and dropping them.
Chapter 13 covers setting up the view. You will learning about updating a view and dropping a view.
Chapter we learn about executions- executing transactions that is.
I have been using this book for a couple months now. When I started using it my skill level was somewhere between beginner and intermediate. After having used this book I feel pretty secure in saying that I am now at the intermediate skill level. I achieved this through the use of this book. It's very well written, easy to follow. Each chapter has these cool little tips for getting things done.
Everything the book walks you through it walks you through doing it in MySQL, postgre05, Microsoft SQL server and Oracle.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Sorry "Dave," this is actually a VERY well-written book
Comment: In my opinion, a technical author's writing ability is just as important as his knowledge of the subject material. I've been disappointed in so many books where the author is undoubtedly an expert in his field, but couldn't effectively organize and translate his thoughts in a way that made sense to me. Based on the review by "Dave" below, I almost lumped this book into that unfortunate category. I'm so glad I happened to flip through a copy of it, because this is a fantastic book. In fact, it's one of the best technical books I've ever owned.
Fehily's writing style is clear and concise. In a typical chapter, he gives an overview of the topic, then demonstrates it with many relevant and progressively complex example queries. This teaching style works so well for so many people--give us a basic idea of what's going on, then SHOW us how it works in the real world. All of the examples are based on a simple but effective sample database that can be downloaded from the publisher's website (you can download an Access database, or scripts that will create the appropriate tables in the RDBMS of your choice).
True to the Visual QuickStart approach to teaching, the layout of this book is highly effective. Most pages have plenty of whitespace. There are no long, rambling paragraphs. Instead, there are lots of summary tables, bulleted lists, and, as mentioned earlier, example queries. And it's the example queries that set this book apart from other introductory SQL books. There are literally hundreds of examples that you'll actually refer to regularly when you start writing your own SQL statements. Even Dave acknowledges that! I also own Ben Forta's excellent "Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes," but this book is much, much better.
All of the usual introductory SQL topics are covered (SELECTs/INSERTs/UPDATEs, functions, joins, grouping, subqueries, etc.), but they are covered so thoroughly and effectively that calling this a beginner's book seems like an understatement. Admittedly, I'm only a casual SQL user, but this book is now the only one I go to when I need to brush up on a topic or find an example query to help get me going.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Very poorly written
Comment: A terribly written book but has many useful examples and only costs $20. The author has no command of the English language at all. The only reason why such poor writing got past the editors in the first place was probably because they had no idea what the hell the author was talking about and thought it was hopeless to fix. Beware.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Perfect SQL classroom text
Comment: I am an IT instructor and don't usually have good things to say about computer books. But I couldn't keep quiet about this book which works well in my SQL for SQL Server class and would work just as well in a SQL for MySQL class. Beginning students don't have many choices in SQL books that help them learn the ropes and then don't stop at the definition / syntax level. After several other tries, this one hit the sweet spot of practicality, theory, data, examples, curriculum breadth for a basic SQL course, depth for advanced students, and supplemental information.
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