relational databases

This book covers the DDL and DML instructions of SQL. It also has a reference to brands like Sybase, Microsoft and Oracle. This a very easy book and the examples showed are very, very helpful. I use this book in all my Databases, SQL and Visual InterDev courses, 'cause it has a good introduction to the SQL standards. If you want a good reference to SQL, I recommend this book !!!

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 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.