Joe Celko's SQL for Smarties: Advanced SQL Programming - Softcover

Celko, Joe

 
9781558603233: Joe Celko's SQL for Smarties: Advanced SQL Programming

Synopsis

Get the most from your database applications through clever SQL programming Joe Celko shares his most useful tips and tricks for advanced SQL programming to help the working programmer gain performance and work around system deficiencies. Addressing real problems that people building real applications face, Joe provides new and creative solutions. A noted consultant, lecturer, and columnist for DBMS and Database Programming & Design magazines, Joe uses entertaining anecdotes and "war stories" to provide real-world insight into SQL programming and warn about potential problems. Become an expert programmer This is the first advanced SQL book available that provides a comprehensive presentation of the techniques necessary to help you progress from a casual user of SQL to an expert programmer. Joe uses an informal, conversational writing style to explain why a particular trick works, so the working programmer can apply it directly to his or her own programming needs. Relying primarily on the SQL-89 features that are now supported by commercial RDBMSs, he also includes an extensive discussion of SQL-92, with information on how it's being implemented in current and future database products. The tips and techniques presented here are not product specific, so they allow programmers to maximize any system's performance.

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Review

In the SQL database community, Joe Celko is a well-known columnist and purveyor of valuable insights. In Joe Celko's SQL for Smarties: Advanced SQL Programming, he picks up where basic SQL training and experience leaves many database professionals and offers tips, techniques and explanations that help readers extend their capabilities to top-tier SQL programming.

Although Celko denies that the book is about database theory, he often alludes to theory to buttress his practical points. This title is not for novices, as the author points out. Instead its intended audience is SQL programmers with at least a year's experience. The book maintains a fine balance between technical discussion and practical explanation--picking hot topics and offering advice on a wide range of subjects.

The book uses ANSI SQL-89 as its baseline standard, with some mention of SQL-92 features. However, it does not focus on any commercial product but rather zeroes in on the SQL language. Celko covers all aspects of database design, optimisation and manipulation, with easy-to-understand explanations of key issues such as why not to use too many nulls, how to use practical normalisation and how to optimise queries.

This insightful text is manna for all the day-to-day SQL coders banging their heads over the language's subtle challenges. --Stephen W.Plain

Topics covered:
Database design and normalisation, SQL data types, querying, grouping, set operations, optimisation, data scaling and encoding.

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