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Home -> Community -> Mailing Lists -> Oracle-L -> RE: Useful Oracle books
Mike,
Date's textbooks are very good, but FUNDAMENTALS OF DATABASE SYSTEMS by
Navathe and Elmasri is much better (imho). I agree that his relational
database writings books are excellent, but slightly anal. Some of his
ideas just would not be practical in the real word. He loves taking
shots at sql, which is fine, but some of his suggestions are
unreasonable.
For example, relations, by definition, should not have duplicates.
Relational algebra operations (on paper!) can perform selection and=20
projection operations on these relations and do not return duplicate
tuples.=20
He would like sql to do the same...=20
Think about the overhead the sql language would to have to incur to
always select distinct under the covers, on every table, on every join.
I agree with his views on nulls but not sure his "special value" or
"default value" scheme is much better though.
As for Celko, I feel he's more concerned with the practical nature of databases/sql, not theory; whereas Date wants to put theory into practice. In any case, without the use (or knowledge) of analytics Celko has written some nifty sql. =20
Ryan - break out an old math text and brush up on set theory, after that you'll find relational algebra a breeze
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Milligan [mailto:Michael.Milligan_at_ingenix.com]=20
Sent: Thursday, May 27, 2004 5:27 PM
To: 'oracle-l_at_freelists.org'
Subject: RE: Useful Oracle books
Date's books, especially his Relational Database Writings books (there
are
four or five of them) are very readable to me. His textbook is more
difficult, but look at one of his Writings books. They are excellent. In
my
opinion, his logic is nearly flawless. I also have Codd's book and I
like
Date's way of thinking a lot more. Joe Celko has some books out as well.
I
read the other day that he "built his career on opposing Date". I've
read
his books as well but, like I said, I persoanlly lean toward Date's way
of
thinking on relational databases (nulls, etc.)
-----Original Message-----
From: ryan.gaffuri_at_cox.net [mailto:ryan.gaffuri_at_cox.net]
Sent: Thursday, May 27, 2004 12:56 PM
To: oracle-l_at_freelists.org; 'oracle-l_at_freelists.org'
Subject: Re: Useful Oracle books
How readable is CJ Date for someone without a strong math background? I
took
a couple of university database classes last year and we touched on some
relational algebra and relational calculus..., but not extensively.=20
Is his stuff better than EF Codd's? What are the most readable
relational
theory books? I can't make it through a book full of formal theory and
proofs.=20
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