Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes
On March - 10 - 20105 COMMENTS
- ISBN13: 9780672325670
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes has established itself as the gold standard for introductory SQL books, offering a fast-paced accessible tutorial to the major themes and techniques involved in applying the SQL language. Forta’s examples are clear and his writing style is crisp and concise. As with earlier editions, this revision includes coverage of current versions of all major commercial SQL platforms. New this time around is coverage of MySQL, and Postgr… More >>
I would give this book only one star, but because it did do a good job of explaining the SQL language, I’m going to give it two. Not once in this book did they explain MySQL, which is the most popular database used today. Also, the book did cover ASP a little, but no PHP. How can you have a book about SQL and not cover the topics of PHP and MySQL, even if for a brief moment. However, they did cover Microsoft SQL Server, a commercial database server which most people will never have to interact with, and of all things, Microsoft Query. I didn’t even know Microsoft still did this. They also covered Oracle, another important DBMS, but again people, Oracle is something only encountered in a commercial world. It is a great system, but most of us will not have to worry about it. And finally, the title totally throws the readers off. It is impossible to learn SQL in ten minutes. Besides the fact that most people can’t read an entire book in ten minutes, it’s impossible to comprehend all the material the book gives you in ten minutes. But anyway, if you’re looking to get some information on how to use SQL with MySQL, or if you plan to use PHP to connect to your database, DON’T BUY THIS BOOK! It will not help you at all.
Rating: 2 / 5
I needed to learn a little SQL to be able to run scripts in my new job. This book is not as elementary as I’d hoped. It is well formatted and easy to read, but lost me not too many pages in.
I was okay with the Select and Where queries, but got to page 30, where it said the following statement as it related to using single quotes – “The single quotes are used to delimit a string. If you are comparing a value against a column that is a string datatype, the delimiting quotes are required” HUH??????
Sorry, close book right here. Nothing identified what that meant. I need a classroom and an instructor. Once I learn what all this is about, I will write a book for people like me.
Rating: 1 / 5
This is my first review and I’m sad to say it is a negative one. I bought this book after having read all the other positive reviews. I discounted some of the few negative ones.
This book requires you download and run a couple of scripts to create and populate sample tables. I provides HORRIBLE instructions on how to do this.
This guy, Ben, was nice enough to create a site where users can ask him questions. You will be lucky if he responds to your question but even if he does, it will be rather smug, and in my case, incomplete.
I bear no ill will towards this guy, but caveat emptor – unless you are already very comfortable with struggling mightily with lots of time to burn to get basic questions answered – don’t buy this book.
Rating: 1 / 5
I liked this book, however I think that the title is a bit misleading…
It does take longer than ten minutes to get this baby cracked.
Cheers
Graham F French
…
Rating: 4 / 5
After reviewing Ben Forta’s Coldfusion book, I’ve been asked to review the pre-version of his soon-to-be-released book on SQL. This book really covers all the SQL commands an Internet/Intranet developer needs to interact with existing databases through ODBC or OLEDB. Unfortunately, the particuliarities of the various database systems (SQL Server, Access, Oracle, Sybase, etc.) are not covered. You will still need to consult the documentation of each of them to learn how to optimize an operation for a specific product or know what is supported and what syntax to use for advanced database manipulations. You’ll have to make an effort on this, Ben.
Rating: 4 / 5