C.J. Date's Database in Depth [EN]

Abstract
A book teaching you E-R Model.

It is difficult to find a clean book on Database Relational model. Typical books on database are of two sorts:

• Very huge theoretical model books
• Very plain vanilla SQL manual for a specific vendor

C.J.Date books doesn't fall in ether of these categories: let's see why!

Database in Depth

C.J.Date is a veteran about this topic: he worked with E.F.Codd from almost the beginning of the relational era. E.F. Codd introduced the E-R theory in the late 1968. So Date's point of view is valuable.
The Book is clean, and at the end of every chapter you find a summary and a good number of exercises: this book was thought for self-studying people too.
"Database in depth" is focused on IT professionals which already knows the field, but doesn't have a strong theoretical background. Date guides us long the E-R model, stressing a lot about the difference between SQL and E-R model.
I haven't follow a course on Database at the University (too annoying me :), so I was surprised by the big difference between the theoretical model (ER) and the most known (or only one known?) SQL implementation.
After some definition, very carefully explained, the Chapter 3 takes us two very interesting issues: "Why duplicate tuples are Prohibited" and "Why Nulls are Prohibited".
In The Author's opinion, the SQL implementation lacks on these two fronts, a regrettable thing, because these two principles can lead us to a polite and terse implementation model.

I read these paragraph with a lot of surprise in my heart, because I didn't even think these two "limitations" of SQL-implementation can carry us so much problems. Also, in these paragraphs Date express a very brave idea: always use Select DISTINCT in all your queries, to avoid a small subset of the weird things caused from repeated tuples. These statements are well analyzed, and in my own opinion, they bring a new light on the E-R model. The only mistake I can move to Date is the excessive stress about distinction of theory and model, to isolate the latter from reader misunderstanding. But this is not a big issue.

So this book can give us a new vision on the old E-R theory. Date can teach us old and new theory concepts in a new way. A true clean exposition makes this book a must for every IT Technical Guru or Geek. I cannot avoid to suggest you this book, even if DataBase aren't your primary focus: because you can learn a lot from its pages!

Global Rating: 8 of 10, a strong buy!

Informazioni sull'autore

Giovanni Giorgi, classe 1974. Dopo il diploma di liceo Classico, si è laureato in Informatica nel febbraio 2000, e attualmente lavora nel campo del software finanziario (trading on line, soluzioni web).
Appassionato di linguaggi di programmazione, si interessa anche di politica e letteratura.

È possibile consultare l'elenco degli articoli scritti da Giovanni Giorgi.

Altri articoli sul tema Libri / Recensioni.

Risorse

1. "C.J. Date's Database in Depth"
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