Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:  
Summary: helpful
Comment: For a user who is new to SQL I found this book very helpful. It provides basic information, in short easy lessons.
Customer Rating:
Summary: David de Leon
Comment: I like this book, I've read it about 3 times. I typed in most of the examples in MS Access 2000, and most of them worked, except those involving transactions, views and cursors. The examples using SELECT queries (including the FROM, WHERE, GROUP BY, HAVING, ORDER BY clauses), IN keyword, UNION keyword, BETWEEN keyword, subqueries, aggregate functions, INSERT, UPDATE, and CREATE TABLE, DELETE TABLE, and DROP TABLE worked just fine. Sometimes I had to tweak them, but there were no major hassles in getting them to work.
What I did not like about the book is that it did not properly identify some concepts as being non-ANSI SQL concepts. For example, triggers, savepoints, and indices are not a part of ANSI SQL. The book did not seem to properly identify them as such. To identify what is not a part of ANSI SQL, I recommend SQL Instant Reference, by Martin Grubner. It is also a small book, great at identifying the full syntax of SQL statements, but short on examples.
SAMS Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes does not give a comprehensive overview of ANSI SQL, but I was never under the impression that it would. But it does give a great start at using SQL, and focuses on the workhorse of SQL - the SELECT statement. I heartily recommend it for the beginner.
Customer Rating:
Summary: We use it for in-house training!
Comment: This book is great for our new employees who haven't had any exposure to SQL. I don't recommend it as a reference but it's not called "Reference Yourself SQL..." it's called "Teach Yourself SQL...".
Very easy to understand and a wonderful jumping off point for future SQL programmers.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Best beginner SQL book on the market
Comment: This is THE book for starting out writing SQL queries for any version of SQL.
There are plenty of books that cover this same material. Most of them even give more detail. But that's my point. This isn't a reference book. Going into the complex details isn't the point of this book.
The point is to buy a cheap and easy book that will give you the basics fast. That way, you can dive in and start querying your database in the least amount of training time. Think of it this way: This is half the pages of "SQL for Dummies". So which one will get you started quicker?
I recommend this book constantly to my coworkers and clients who need to learn how to query the databases that we work with every day. My usual advice to them, and to anyone reading this review, is to buy this book to get you started. Then, once you're comfortable with the basics, go out and get a more detailed reference book on the specific version of SQL that you use.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The most helpful SQL book i've never seen
Comment: This is the kind of book you need to understand and learn the basic SQL syntax and queries in just a few days or weeks. The title is more marketing oriented (i think nobody can learn SQL in just 10 min) but what it's really true is that you can "eat" each chapter in just 5 or 10 min. (it depends how fast you read). The easy aproach of show you a few SQL lines samples...then the query's result... then the anaylis... it's what, IMO, makes this book one of the best. There is no *bs*, just facts and nice samples; straight to the point. I do this...i get this...i write this...i get this. No theory, just practice samples and results.
The drawback (and other readers think the same) it's that Ben did not show how to create the Sample Database needed to learn and practice all this stuff. There is one Appendix at the end of the book but he's almost saying "good luck" to all of us because you can find no "how to" or recipe to create the sample database he gave online. I had to make some tweaks on the MySQL script to work and a had similar problems (fewer really) creating the samples databases on an MS-SQL engine.
Price is a good point to be considered also. You will get every penny you spend back when you buy this book. Most SQL bestsellers books out there are above the $40's or $50's ... this book should be yours, brand new not used, for just $10.
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