SQL Queries for Mere Mortals: A Hands-On Guide to Data Manipulation in SQL [With CDROM]

by John L. Viescas, Michael J. Hernandez, John Viescas, et al.

Book Overview

Unless you are working at a very advanced level, this is the only SQL book you will ever need. The authors have taken the mystery out of complex queries and explained principles and techniques with... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0321444434
• ISBN13: 9780321444431
• Release Date: January 2007
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
• Length: 631 Pages
• Weight: 2.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 7.0" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

A great book for a review of the basics

I really enjoyed this book and the return to the fundamentals that this book provides.

Must have SQL Book

I got this book to help with certification. I didn't realize how much I didn't know until I got this book. It improved my coding exponentially. It is easy and builds on what you have learned chapter by chapter. There are practice questions at the end of each chapter and a CD that provides all of the sample databases in the most popular formats (SQL Server, Access and Mysql and Oracle). There's hours and hours of review questions to practice on. This book is great and will be a reference I use for years to come. Not for experts, but everyone else can benefit.

The only book you'll ever need for SQL Queries.

I read this book from cover to cover as an extra resource for my Databases class at the Art Institute and I will say this... If you want to learn SQL, get this book! I was turned on to this book after I read Databases for Mere Mortals by the same author. The feeling I got while reading Hernandez's books was that he really knew and loved what he was talking about. In this title, he explains SQL Queries in a super logical and organized format, there is NO WAY, you won't understand it! The title of the book, "For Mere Mortals" is absolutely dead on. I had zero experience with Databases and SQL and after reading both, I can communicate with my colleagues and they entrust me with tasks accordingly. Even if you already have an understanding of SQL queries, you will come to respect and even adopt the framework that Hernandez presents because it clearly and visually illustrates the entire playing field in a way that leaves no rock unturned. Highly recommend this book. Namaste, Dey

This Book Is Nothing Short Of Fantastic!

It's easy to find a good book that will provide definitions and examples for inner joins vs. outer joins, subqueries, etc. You can read them and understand the definitions and/or examples, however, when you come across a 10 - 20 line query in your job or have to create your own complicated query from scratch you realize just how tenuous your gut-level understanding of this mysterious thing called SQL really is. This book will give you the gut-level understanding you so desperately crave - and need if you are working with databases. The authors provide clear explanations of the various SQL constructs for both the SQL Standard and real world levels (which are oftentimes two different things). They further deconstruct real-world issues by also describing the anomalies between some of the more popular databases. But you can get all this from just about any other good SQL book. Where this one really shines is the way it leads you from simple to more and more complex queries via well-crafted and well-explained examples. They progress from simple queries to queries containing expressions to filtering data with a 'where' clause to inner joins to outer joins to unions to subqueries to aggregate functions to grouping data and then filtering that data by 'having' clauses. They end up by covering updating, inserting, and deleting data. They give tons of examples that illustrate how to solve common problems and the more trickier "gotchas" that you're likely to run into. These examples occur both within the meat of the chapter, i.e. where they are explaining terms and concepts, and at the end of the chapter where they describe how and why they put the queries together the way they did. The queries are all against 5 databases containing from 6 to 13 tables each. The databases, tables, and all of the queries are contained on a CD ROM that accompanies the book. Each chapter ends with 3 or 4 problems for *each* of the 5 databases. If you really want to learn how to write complex queries then do as many of the problems as you can. The solutions are on the CD so if you get stuck you can see how the authors solved the problem. The more you do, the more you will find that you can craft fairly complex SQL queries "from the hip". As one who did all of the sample problems I can assure you that that statement is no lie. I cannot recommend this book enough.

SQL review

This is a great book especially for a beginner starting to do SQL queries. The examples in the book are clear and easy to follow and it's nice there's a CD which has good examples also. The book also describes inner and outer joins and grouping data. This book has helped me in my work.