 See larger picture | SQL In A Nutshell, 2nd Edition
by
Kevin Kline, Daniel Kline, and Brand Hunt
- O'Reilly Media, Inc.List Price: $44.95
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Product Description SQL in a Nutshell applies the eminently useful "Nutshell" format to Structured Query Language (SQL), the elegant--but complex--descriptive language that is used to create and manipulate large stores of data. For SQL programmers, analysts, and database administrators, the new second edition of SQL in a Nutshell is the essential date language reference for the world's top SQL database products. SQL in a Nutshell is a lean, focused, and thoroughly comprehensive reference for those who live in a deadline-driven world. This invaluable desktop quick reference drills down and documents every SQL command and how to use it in both commercial (Oracle, DB2, and Microsoft SQL Server) and open source implementations (PostgreSQL, and MySQL). It describes every command and reference and includes the command syntax (by vendor, if the syntax differs across implementations), a clear description, and practical examples that illustrate important concepts and uses. And it also explains how the leading commercial and open sources database product implement SQL. This wealth of information is packed into a succinct, comprehensive, and extraordinarily easy-to-use format that covers the SQL syntax of no less than 4 different databases. When you need fast, accurate, detailed, and up-to-date SQL information, SQL in a Nutshell, Second Edition will be the quick reference you'll reach for every time. SQL in a Nutshell is small enough to keep by your keyboard, and concise (as well as clearly organized) enough that you can look up the syntax you need quickly without having to wade through a lot of useless fluff. You won't want to work on a project involving SQL without it. SQL in a Nutshell applies the classic O'Reilly "Nutshell" format to Structured Query Language (SQL), the elegant descriptive language that's used to create and manipulate stores of data. This book explains the purpose and proper syntax of hundreds of SQL statements, as defined in four major SQL implementations, and details each entry with explanatory text and illustrative examples. Perhaps best of all, authors Kevin and Daniel Kline feature MySQL in their coverage, and give it billing that's equal to that of Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, and PostgreSQL. Their inclusion of open-source MySQL, which in most situations carries no license fee, is recognition of its growing popularity and suitability for serious database applications; also, it improves this book's appeal to Unix and Linux developers. The majority of this slender book comprises eminently useful syntax documentation (which is in the style of Unix man pages, with bracketed options and monospace arguments) and the other information that's specific to individual statements and functions. Additionally, it includes a relatively small amount of conceptual information, such as a section on the proper use of NULL values. The material that's not statement-specific also contrasts data-type implementations of the four covered platforms--for example, readers learn that a PostgreSQL int2 value is known as a smallint in ANSI standard SQL. This is a particularly handy reference book, if you use one of the emphasized SQL implementations. --David Wall Topics covered: Structured Query Language (SQL), as implemented in Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, and PostgreSQL, as well as in ANSI standard SQL (SQL92 and SQL99). After an introduction to data types and relational database fundamentals (the latter is not emphasized), the authors document SQL statements and functions, one by one and alphabetically. They take care to point out differences among the four implementations.
Featured Customer Reviews Very Good, Sucky index!,
January 08, 2009 While this is a very good reference book and deserves the 4 stars, I continually get frustrated with 1 thing: The index is poor. I don't know how many times after not finding something in the index I've had to skim through the table of contents and then search a bit through the pages. This can be very frustrating for a reference book.
Again, though, the content has been very helpful for months of Oracle & MySQL reference.An SQL Reference Book,
November 05, 2006 This book covers various "flavors" of SQL, but not all of them. This was a "recommended" reference book for a college-level Introduction to SQL course. I will keep the book around as a technical reference even though I discovered it was a lot easier to find PostgreSQL syntax information by typing a command into Google and scanning the results for examples. Nice Pocket Reference For SQL,
June 10, 2005 This is a nice, quick guide for referencing SQL. This book is not a 900 page behemoth to teach you all the ins and outs of SQL setup and performance tweaking, nor is it a 30 page list of commands. Rather, it is a nice "tweener" guide (200+ pages) to get your feet wet and remind you of what commands are and how SQL can be used. 'SQL In A Nutshell' covers SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, and PostgreSQL, going over the SQL standards that you can expect from these favorite flavors of SQL. Light on examples but heavy on syntax, I feel that this is a nice companion manual to have at your side when you need to remind yourself how a particular command should be written.
If you are a SQL developer could you live without this manual? Yes you probably could live without it, but it's handy to have at your side and I would recommend it.
**** RECOMMENDED Cross platform syntax reference,
November 07, 2004
This is classic O'Reilly. The text is well written, and the book is very dense and well organized. There is a little introductory material but the heart of the book is the statement and function reference. You will get the most out of this book if you already have a reasonable understanding of SQL. This is not a book for beginners.
This would make an ideal desktop reference, particularly for someone working in a cross-platform environment that goes directly to the SQL.Maintaining several SQL implementations?,
October 28, 2004 [A review of the 2nd edition, 2004.]
Perhaps the best virtue of this book is that it spans all the major variants of SQL - db2, Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL and Microsoft's SQL Server. The authors are not beholden to any particular vendor. Thus the book describes the common ground. That is, the commands and usage that are most likely to be the same or similar across these implementations. Because a major use of this book might be in migrating. To this end, the more code you can have in this common area, the less painful the migration.
Another possible usage is if you are a DBA in charge of running 2 [or more] of these implementations. Perhaps due to some legacy issues, you have to support them. If you cannot merge SQL code into one common version, you can get problems. Being able to use this book to find quickly common commands and options to those commands might greatly help you maximise a common body of code.
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