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Joe Celko's SQL Programming Style (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems)...
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by Joe Celko
Sales Rank: 501716
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List Price: $33.95
$20.00
At Amazon
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Paperback: 272 pages
Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann April 11, 2005
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0120887975
ISBN-13: 978-0120887972
Product Dimensions:
9.1 x 7.4 x 0.7 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
Product Review
SQL Programming Style doesnt teach you how to become a better SQL developer with SQL puzzles and brainteasers. Rather, it shows you how to work in logical and declarative terms.
SQL-Server-Performance.com, August 17, 2006
Book Description
Are you an SQL programmer that, like many, came to SQL after learning and writing procedural or object-oriented code? Or have switched jobs to where a different brand of SQL is being used, or maybe even been told to learn SQL yourself?
If even one answer is yes, then you need this book. A "Manual of Style" for the SQL programmer, this book is a collection of heuristics and rules, tips, and tricks that will help you improve SQL programming style and proficiency, and for formatting and writing portable, readable, maintainable SQL code. Based on many years of experience consulting in SQL shops, and gathering questions and resolving his students SQL style issues, Joe Celko can help you become an even better SQL programmer.
+ Help you write Standard SQL without an accent or a dialect that is used in another programming language or a specific flavor of SQL, code that can be maintained and used by other people.
+ Enable you to give your group a coding standard for internal use, to enable programmers to use a consistent style.
+ Give you the mental tools to approach a new problem with SQL as your tool, rather than another programming language one that someone else might not know!
Customer Reviews & Comments
Style guides tend to be heuristics of understanding a hard-to-define -- consequently hard to defend -- criteria that will make your design effective. Strunk's "Elements of Style" would be an exemplary definition of a style guide. With all style guides, however, you can follow them religiously and still end up with an execrable book or living room. Mr. Celko spends remarkably little time with style formatting, although he does delineate what constitutes readable and maintainable SQL code. Where the book finds its utmost utility is in the consistent and increasing reinforcement of thinking in sets. SQL is not about transforming data (although you can); SQL is about properly storing data, and then being able to find it again. Simple enough, but all-too-easy to get wrong. The first two chapters talk about naming and actual SQL style. This is primarily what I'd expected, but Mr. Celko isn't about to let me off that easily. In discussing naming, he brings international standards into the mix. Right away, the standard of my existing SQL code falls away under this level of scrutiny. Throughout the book, Mr. Celko is bringing up a data discipine I have long-suspected existed but honestly never sought to embrace. Why should I develop a data model that adheres to standards, if mine will be the only model in the company even attempting it? Therein lays the problem with this book: it can make a reader uncomfortable. Mr. Celko is writing about SQL and, more importantly, the data it will describe and manipulate, in far more depth and with far more rigor than I've seen elsewhere. He has an entire chapter on encoding data, another on scales used to measure data. Nowhere else will such treatment be gathered in one place, in the context of using SQL. Moreover, his conclusions are backed by years of experience *and* impressive references to back him. The bibliography will surely cause me to invest in yet more books. Of course, the book can be dry in spots. Encoding data properly is important, but it's not as entertaining as seeing his effective SQL examples put to work. I think the balance between showing data as it is displayed and explaining the theory of the encoding (or modeling, or selection) is tricky to achieve, but I don't believe it ever broke down. The *density* of the book is striking; going into a 195-page book, you don't readily expect to re-read the same page three times to grasp something, but you must. At some point in the book, you will encounter an aspect of SQL development you've never come close to mastering, and it will give you pause. Take notes, work it out, and dig deeper. It'll be worth it. Could I recommend this to newcomers to SQL programming? Qualified yes; you need to discipline yourself to work through much of it if you lack the experience in what's being presented. The book would make an excellent two-semester course in database development, one I suspect many would enjoy more than the typical relational database classes taught today. Mr. Celko has again delivered an essential text on SQL, and it would serve as a springboard for a thorough introduction to all things data. Fred
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Joe Celko's SQL Programming Style (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems)...
List Price: $33.95
Available from Amazon
Price: $20.00
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