The exercises for the chapters, however, are very poorly written. One or two questions in each of the exercises we have encountered so far in my class have been essentially meaningless, so if you are a teacher looking to set this text for a course, beware! Make sure that you read through and correct any ambiguous questions before you set them for your students.

To give an example, one question asks the student to write a SQL query to calculate "the average number of bookings for each hotel in August." Not the average number of bookings per night for each hotel in August, or the average number of bookings in August across all hotels, but essentially a figure which is not actually an average. Rather annoying.

But if you won't be following the exercises slavishly, this book is otherwise worth every penny.


excellent for all levels of SQL   June 26, 2003
 16 out of 16 found this review helpful

This book was the recommended title for my second year university SQL module. I used it a s a complete newbie to SQL and found it incredibly helpful both at a basic descriptional level as well as at advanced level as I progressed. Focus is well split between essential coceptual/logical design, normalisation etc as well as actual code syntax. Absolutely essential reference for anyone using or considering using SQL (includes DBMS specific instructions too for MS Access and Oracle for example as well).