Reviews for Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 21 Days

1. Did anyone proof-read this?!?!?!?

   Rated 3 out of 5 stars, October 12th, 2007

   I read tiggerinamsterdam's review of this book but thought he was maybe exagerrating the number of typos. He's right - the book is full of them. I've done a bit of SQL before so I managed to notice that the output they give for some of the example queries is totally wrong. I can't believe they managed to even release this book as it obviously hasn't been proof read at all. It's a real pity as the book actually semms to be quite good. Another major problem is that there is no CDROM included that contains the example tables. The authors could have at least given a link to download the tables. Instead, the book has two appendices containing all the code for creating and populating the tables used in the examples (17 pages which would take forever to type manually). A tip is that if you do a web search for "Appendix B. Code Examples to Create Tables" and "Appendix C. Code Examples to Populate Tables" you will be able to view these appendices on the O'Reilly site and copy-and-paste the commands. Be warned though - the code also has typos. For example, I'm using MySQL to do the examples. The first example table "checks" has a column named "check". This is a keyword in MySQL and hence gives you an error. You have to rename it to something like "check1" for the code to work. The other tables I had to change were "hilow" and "convert" before they would work. The values in appendix C to be entered for the "products" table will also give an error (they try to insert alphanumeric values into a numeric column). Hopefully this will help someone out.

2. A great introduction to SQL

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, June 12nd, 2006

   The book is a really good introduction to SQL programming with examples in Oracle, and MySQL. Having had to learn SQL on the run as part of my job this book has proved invaluable as a desk reference to the more "interesting" parts of the "language". If you are new to SQL and need an introduction that doesn't assume a lot of previous knowledge this is a good book. It does assume you have access to SQL of some kind or other and the set-up of that is not in the scope of the book.

3. Caveat emptor!! (let the buyer beware)

   Rated 3 out of 5 stars, November 12th, 2005

   First impressions from this book (as I'm currently only 2 days and a few chapters into it) are that it is good and does get across the SQL syntax etc.

   However - BEWARE - it's absolutely riddled with typo's!! One classic example of this is a table you have to create with low and high temperature fields. This book often mixes the two up and transposes them.

   Since programming languages are generally, by definition, VERY reliant upon correct syntax this can be frustrating if you blindly follow the book.

   I have a number of other SAMS books and they usually offer on their website a page for typo's etc, as well as downloadable data for use with the book's exercises. Here that doesn't appear to be the case. I can't find a "known errors" page or a way of shortcutting the data entry. You'll probably soon get sick of labourious data entry at the command line.

   However, I am learning SQL effectively in spite of these limitations. Just bear in mind that if you blindly follow the book's examples that you'll have more than the odd moment of "why is this not working?". It's most likely that you assumed all the tables were set up correctly in the book's examples and you copied them word for word. An assumption I would normally take for granted, but sadly not in this case.

   A good teaching book, but whoever did the proofreading should be shot! Keep your wits about you and THINK as you go, don't just assume this book will teach you everything you need to know by following it parrot-fashion.

   (but then again, who ever learnt anything by drifting along in autopilot anyway?)

4. A solid introduction to SQL

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, December 12th, 2002

   You certainly could learn SQL in 21 days from this book - and learn it well, too. Each chapter uses a fictional database/table and then shows a series of SQL commands against that database/table and their respective results - it's a fast way of learning when you can see things in action. The result is a concise book that is as much a handy reference manual as it is a tutorial. I found this book to be a pain-free route to learning SQL :) - thoroughly recommended.

5. good reference

   Rated 4 out of 5 stars, January 12th, 2001

   its a good reference, but i always find the "21 days" volumes a little vague, but this was good and generic.