Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:  
Summary: Great Book for Basic SQL concepts
Comment: If there is one book in head first that deserves attention (apart from Servlets book) it is this. All the programming books are great anyways (Exception is Head First Design patterns, PLEASE DONT BUY that one!).
SQL Head first helps in visually knowing what is going to happen, especially when running mutltiple OUTER JOINs and writing subqueries etc. Thanks to this book (and a combination of SQL Cookbook and SQL Tuning (for more advanced people)).
Here are some of positives of this book :
1.) Starts out at very basic level (this can be annoying for some folks, who already know much of the stuff, but then this book is not for you then, try SQL Cookbook or SQL Tuning). I would still say this book can be kept as a good reference, as even seasoned people can be helped from visually organized "notes" in there.
2.) Advanced Select section is awesome, JOINS and subqueries and Associations are explained very well. (In this case diagrams help in better visualizing things and helped me understand and recall the concepts really well, After a long time i am not trying to "remember" what the syntax of a clause is in SQL, instead i just visualize things (an example of this would be a sum(xxx) and a group by ... and how the diagram illustrates it very neatly, if i want to use a complex JOIN query or a multiple group by, i don't have to google anymore).
Cons :
1.) Some of topics could have been covered in a better way, example tuning etc.
2.) is @ medium level, for advanced topics i still refer to SQL cookbook or tuning book (by Dan).
All in all it was a great buy for me.
Regards
Vyas, Anirudh
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great compendium for all developers that are not Database Administrators.
Comment: If you are developer and need to refresh your SQL knowledge or if you want to learn SQL very fast and with some fun - it is book for you. This is not a book for Database Administrators. Second disclaimer - they use examples for MySQL, so if you are using different DB, you need to translate some of them.
I believe I do not need to convince you how good are "Head First" series, so let's focus on the content.
It starts from explanation what DB is and some easy SELECT queries, so you can read this book without any knowledge in DB world.
Next chapters cover UPDATE, INSERT, DELETE, primary/foreign keys, ALTER, ORDER BY with most common aggregation functions (like MAX, AVG), inner/outer joins and more. There is also place for some theory and DB patterns.
As always, couple of the last chapters contains a bit more complex information like roles and privileges, constraints, unions, intersections and subqueries.
In summary, it is very good book that gives you short introduction to DB world (with some advanced knowledge). I do not know anything that is required in my day to day job that is not in this book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: good condition
Comment: The book was in the condition as was described: completely new. and fast shipment. thanks
Customer Rating:
Summary: Fan-friggin-tastic
Comment: Straight up best tech manual I've ever purchased. Feels like a 101 language workbook, reads like a breeze, and at the end of the sitting you know something. It's not dry, it's not tedious, and its playful approach doesn't in any way water down its comprehension.
Truly an excellent effort, really happy I purchased it, please keep writing these.
Customer Rating:
Summary: This is a kind of sad joke
Comment: From the very beginning I enjoy reading HF series books. HF SQL is up to the first half of the content very boring and I would even say it can be dangerous for an SQL beginners. It tries to teach them with the style of examples where first is bad design and after a correct solution follows. There is too much space in the book describing intentionally first "let's try" examples. The consequence is that the correct solutions that follow later are not very clearly visible. I think this is quite opposite grasping of the method how HF series book should be written. The "original" HF books from K.Bates etc. directly evolves simple examples and evoke the need of a reader to find out how it all works.
And again when you see the same pictures in the 10th HF series book it ends to be a positively provocating or joking.
The second half of the book can be a litle bit useful even for experienced SQLers. I mean to fill-in the gaps of their SQL knowledge. It is still HF series books so it is easy to read very quickly thus very good for always busy people.
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