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Reviews (5)

The Alice Book
I googled "The Alice Book, databases", and nothing came out, so I'm fixing mostly this part in my review.

In a word, if you are a DBA, you don't need this book and won't be able to understand 99% of it, but if you are database theoretician, this book is on your bookshelf already.

This book quite complete review of relational database science as of 1995. In many cases, when studying particular subject I get away with original research papers available at citeseer and elsewhere, but often I find that it's much quicker just to open the Alice book at the right place.

my favourite book about database theory
Whenever I need to check or find some result about database theory,
I look into Foundations of Databases, and I find the answer, stated
and explained in a clear and understandable way. This book
contains all you need about foundations of databases, and even more ...

My second database Book
Here is the book to grow up from intro. It is definetely harder to read than Date, but - as it is always with math - the extra effort is rewarding.

Reviews (36)

Worst database book I've ever purchased
I am a Database Admin who was required to purchase this book as part of my Master's program.I can honestly say that I'll never refer this book again.

This book is way too heavy on theory and does a poor job of providing enough practical examples to support the material discussed. Any examples provided do a lousy job of illustrating what's discussed.

It's unfortunate that schools choose to use books such as these but I can only assume politics are involved. This book is over $100 brand new.... an expensive paperweight.

There are better and CHEAPER books on database internals and theory.If you're forced to buy this for school, buy it used!

A confusing and time-wasting book
To database developers, administrators or curious students, with love:

It is very unfortunate that destiny had me suffer the tremendous pain and frustration in reading the 3rd edition of "Database Management Systems", by Ramakrishnan and Gehrke, to learn the fundamentals of DBMS, for the contents of the book lack preciseness and clarity, thus, leading to a lot of confusion and ambiguity in the mind of the reader, who is learning databases for the first time (and is presumably an experienced programmer).

Authors of the book have badly failed in properly covering the topics based on clear and formal definitions of fundamental database concepts. Many topics were not dealth with by the authors comprehensively and lack focus too. The book is full of hundreds of lines of explanation that require another expanation. It is true that this book is more like a puzzle for you to put together in order to make heads or tails of what the topic really is all about.

This book seems appealing, however, to the instructors, for the authors have provided them with supplementary material that mainly includes lecture slides, complete solutions to problems in the book, and some examination papers.

In summary and conclusion, the 3rd edition of "Database Management Systems", by Ramakrishnan and Gehrke, sucks and is it not worth your time or money. This conclusion higly propabilistically holds for all previous editions of the book. A strongly recommended alternative is "Fundamentals of Database Systems" by Elmasri and Navathe.

Oh, and by the way, those quotes (all of which I bothered to read) that the authors have selected to start each chapter of the book with are really silly, irrelevant and meaningless.

Reviews (1)

a nice collection
This book is well-known in academic database circles as "The Red Book" (in fact, the editors maintain a useful web site at http://redbook.cs.berkeley.edu/) and is a canonical resource in thosecircles.It's primarily intended as a reader/textbook for a graduatecourse in database systems and has a heavy emphasis on implementationissues.It contains a fair number of classic papers that should be read byanybody who actually works on database engines as well as a number of morerecent papers that should be read by anyone who does research in databasesystems.The usefulness for end-users of databases (i.e., applicationwriters) is unclear.

The 3rd edition, in my opinion, improves upon the2nd edition considerably.Of course, it freshens the paper selection insome areas.More importantly, it prunes the number of subject areasconsiderably, resulting in a more manageable collection (in more ways thanone!).For example, a great deal of work was performed in the late 1980sand early 1990s in areas such as extensibility and active databasemanagement.By the late 1990s, the SQL3/SQL1999 train had already left thestation - work still goes on in these areas, but at a greatly reduced rate. Conversely, data mining and decision analysis have become hugely importantareas, and the new Red Book has a section on it.

Reviews (17)

Perfect for those who can only read symbols
This is quite the typical Computer Science textbook, vastly overpriced and lacking any real information. Veteran CS students will be happy to find that even the most simple concepts have been reduced to pure math, this to make sure that creative students who have no passion for math do not have an unfair advantage.

If you can only read math (or prefer that everything in life is described purely in equation form), this is the best book on the market!

A typical bad CS textbook
This is a required book for my undergrad Databases class. While reading over it before the semester started I began to wonder why my professor would ever choose such a terrible book. Of course it became clear when, on the first day of class, the professor began to read word for word off slides with the names of the authors sitting at the bottom along with the familiar 'cute' artwork from the cover. Note to instructors: choosing a book because it provides prewritten notes and allows you to be extra lazy is not a valid reason for choosing a textbook. The book is filled with lots of mathematical notation with few good examples. By good examples I mean those that involve realistic databases and not the 'Consider a schema R = (A, B, C, D, E)...' mathematical drivel that fills most of the pages.

Ground Up Knowledge
I read some of the reviews here. The comments varies from a good book to a worthless one.

If you are really interested in making a career out of databases, then this is a book you got to read. An analogy that comes to mind is "You got to have a strong foundation to build a sky craper". This is exactly what this book is. It helps you build a strong foundation.

I got hold of this book when I was in my 4th Semester of my BS in computer science (1994 - 2nd Edition of this book) to clear my Database concepts exam. Ever since, whenever I feel I might not have understood some concept, I go back to this book.

One thing you got to understand is, its not a book that you can just read through and tell people that you have understood the concepts. You need to work the book.

Reviews (6)

Poorly described material, too many mistakes!
I just got my hands on this book for my master program study. From just reading a couple of chapters, I can see where this book is going. It is clear that the book was published in a rush, and never reviewed properly. The author takes too much time struggling to explain the theory, and when it comes to the example, author simply tells that its obvious, although the theory behind is explained in at least 3 pages. Also, the amount of mistakes I found in this short period is enormous and unbarebale. You start to get lost when following the example and feel you can move forward.

My advise for you, if you are not obliged to buy this book, then don't do so, specially if you look at the price of it.

Good DDBS book, but needs updating
This book was chosen as the main text for a distributed database systems graduate Computer Science course I recently took. For a CS course on the subject, it is an obvious pick since not many related texts exist on the market. The text is good, but needs updating since it was published in 1999. Research papers from IEEE and ACM were relied on as supplementary reading, since research in DDBS continues, and much has been written in the last four years.

Poorly written. Boring.
I think this book is poorly written. The authors go a long way describing all kinds of taxonomies (look at the abundance of 3d diagrams such as Figure 4.11) without letting the usergrasp the major ideas. Just check the discussion on the 10 types of distributed databases in chapter 4.

They also spend a lot of time and paper describing relatively simple concept without actually making the concepts any clearer. Some concepts never get defined so it's not clear why they hadto be mentioned, check 13.4.2 and try to figure out what the convoy effect is.

Reviews (8)

Best theoretical book on Database design ever!
I read this book for training as a senior DBA consultant and enjoyed CJ Date's excellent treatise on databases. This is the ultimate book on database theory. Like another reader commented its not how to get OCP/MCDBA whatever certifications but actually will make life better in the long run as a serious DBA pro. I now actually understand the basis of complex database topics such as cursors, data models, and concurrency/locking topics that previously are skimmed over in other books and training guides. Best book for a beginner and yeah its a bit dry and academic but CJ Date writes clearly. A MUST FOR SERIOUS COMPUTER SCIENCE STUDENTS!

A classic, to be read by any serious developer
Date's seminal work is critical to understanding databases - a step mostly forgotten by those who believe every concept can be taught using commercial products with brain-dead examples in under 24 hours. Date teaches the logic and theory that underlie all successful practice. You can probably buy a different book and create a mock database faster, but you will neither understand nor be able to use it well. Do yourself a favor and read this first to understand what a database is; only then can you judge the value of other books.

Reviews (37)

Want the big picture?!
I consider this text a superior cover on database systems.
So far,I didn't see a text as thorough as this one to cover the theory of databases. The book is full of SQL examples that links what you've learned with DBMS(s) and it also emphasizes the practical& impractical query algebraic e.g. division in query algebra and how would you accomplish it efficiently in SQL. However, the authors have devoted parts of their times to illustrate the implementation of queries for those interested in a deeper understanding.

You will find also interesting chapters about advanced database issues like data-mining, warehousing...etc. These topics need volumes to be covered thoroughly; however, they are covered in a way that make your life easier whenever you read postgraduate level texts on database systems.

As an undergrad. student I would say you don't have to consult any other text through the course. It is a full coverage, I guess!

As DB professional (Data Modeling,DBA,DB programmer or whatever you do for life !)I guess, unless you have problems with your wife or your roommate :),you will enjoy your time reading this text.

The bottom line is:I recommend this text for you or in other words, this is what you need.

for professionals
this is one of the best books if you ever wanted to know anything about databases. I think this isn't a tutorial book or a book for self study on this topic for beginners - but if you ever need to look up for an profound explication on some database matter this will be the book for you.

This gives you insights into your database, if you are on the frontier from application developer that has to understand what a database realy does.

Editorial Review

Aimed at any serious programmer or computer science student,the new second edition of Introduction to Algorithms builds onthe tradition of the original with a truly magisterial guide to theworld of algorithms. Clearly presented, mathematically rigorous, andyet approachable even for the math-averse, this title sets a highstandard for a textbook and reference to the best algorithms forsolving a wide range of computing problems.

With sample problems andmathematical proofs demonstrating the correctness of each algorithm,this book is ideal as a textbook for classroom study, but its reachdoesn't end there. The authors do a fine job of explaining eachalgorithm. (Reference sections on basic mathematical notation will helpreaders bridge the gap, but it will help to have some math backgroundto appreciate the full achievement of this handsome hardcover volume.)Every algorithm is presented in pseudo-code, which can be implementedin any computer language, including C/C++ and Java. This ecumenicalapproach is one of the book's strengths. When it comes to sorting andcommon data structures, from basic linked lists to trees (includingbinary trees, red-black, and B-trees), this title really shines, withclear diagrams that show algorithms in operation. Even if you justglance over the mathematical notation here, you can definitely benefitfrom this text in other ways.

The book moves forward with moreadvanced algorithms that implement strategies for solving morecomplicated problems (including dynamic programming techniques, greedyalgorithms, and amortized analysis). Algorithms for graphing problems(used in such real-world business problems as optimizing flightschedules or flow through pipelines) come next. In each case, theauthors provide the best from current research in each topic, alongwith sample solutions.

This text closes with a grab bag of usefulalgorithms including matrix operations and linear programming,evaluating polynomials, and the well-known Fast Fourier Transformation(FFT) (useful in signal processing and engineering). Final sections on"NP-complete" problems, like the well-known traveling salesman problem,show off that while not all problems have a demonstrably final and bestanswer, algorithms that generate acceptable approximate solutions canstill be used to generate useful, real-world answers.

Throughout thistext, the authors anchor their discussion of algorithms with currentexamples drawn from molecular biology (like the Human Genome Project),business, and engineering. Each section ends with short discussions ofrelated historical material, often discussing original research in eacharea of algorithms. On the whole, they argue successfully thatalgorithms are a "technology" just like hardware and software that canbe used to write better software that does more, with betterperformance. Along with classic books on algorithms (like DonaldKnuth's three-volume set, The Art of ComputerProgramming), this title sets a new standard for compiling thebest research in algorithms. For any experienced developer, regardlessof their chosen language, this text deserves a close look for extendingthe range and performance of real-world software. --RichardDragan

Editorial Review

Data on the Web: From Relations to Semistructured Data and XML is an examination of XML as a universal data transfer language and the theory behind the merging of the document-centric Web with a data-driven infrastructure. The book is intended as a textbook analysis of the issues, as well as background material for tool developers and others interested in the serious architectural details.

Aimed at readers already familiar with database concepts, the book includes little introductory material. It quickly lays out the concepts of self-describing semi-structured data and how XML fits into this approach to data representation. The discussion deals with XML as a data transfer mechanism and not a presentation language. While there is a quick explanation of DTDs, Xlink, and XPointer, readers should be fairly familiar with XML before approaching this advanced title.

The meat of the book revolves around query languages for XML. The authors present XML-QL and XSL in depth as examples. Then they move into much more advanced concepts such as schema formalisms, path constraints, and storage architectures. The book wraps up with a look at Lore and Strudel--two real-world systems that work with semi-structured data. Because of its intensive study of database and query theory, this textbook isn't for the ordinary Web developer. If data architectures are your expertise, however, Data on the Web may open new design doors. --Stephen W. Plain

Reviews (8)

An excellent XQuery starter book and reference
This book is a compact and thorough guide to XQuery. The Jonathan Robie tutorial in the beginning of the book is itself worth the overall price of the book.

Nice coverage of XQuery/XPath
A very useful explanation of XQuery and how to use it to analyse XML data. The book shows how this can be done with or without a supporting XML Schema or DTD that describes the XML. The authors explain why this goes beyond a Google-type search. The latter does not (at least currently) know or use any structural information about data, primarily because it scans all types of mostly unstructured data.

But the rise of XML has driven demand for XQuery, to take advantage of this structure. The book also shows how XPath is used, as part of the XQuery implementation.

Another merit of the book is its good description of the difference between XQuery and XSLT. The latter also has been getting a lot of attention from programmers. But, as explained by the authors, XSLT is mainly used on document centric data, mostly to generate HTML. By contrast, XQuery has no such restriction.

Excellent survey of a complex topic by some of the designers
Full disclosure: I know all of the authors and count them among my friends.

In spite of that, I can honestly say that I think this book is a very valuable guide to the emerging standard query language for XML.The insights provided by people who are actually doing the day-to-day design, and implementation in some cases, of this language are not available in any other XQuery book.

The various chapters of the book provide overviews, design precepts, detailed examples, and thorough explanations (even of subjects as arcane as the static typing rules of the language).

Isbn: 1558606777
Sales Rank: 331763
Subjects:  1. Computer Bks - Languages / Programming    2. Computer Books: Database    3. Computers    4. Database Management - General    5. Database Management - SQL Server    6. Object-oriented programming (C    7. Object-oriented programming (Computer science)    8. Programming - General    9. Programming Languages - SQL    10. Relational Databases    11. SQL (Computer program language    12. SQL (Computer program language)    13. Sql (Programming Language)    14. Computers / Database Management / General   

Reviews (4)

Stellar presentation of complex material
A fantastic, in depth, survey of all the issues surrounding IR, from algorithms to presentation of IR results. With one clear authorial voice, the authors present all the things you hope a survey book will- a structured, coherent and complete framework onto which you can append future learning; what common practice within commercial industry really is; a quantitative analysis of the relative effectiveness of each algorithm, including the methodolgy used to arrive at results;an in-depth and clear explanation of all major algorithms.

They also give fair warning when they are only covering the outline of subject matter (which is rare), and they give extensive footnotes for anyone who needs to go deeper. The writing is always clear; the auithors never engage in the type of handwaving that other authors use to get past material you have the impression they themselves don't fully grasp.

If you need to implement search for a database and don't knowwhere to start or what might be involved, this is the book for you. If you need to implement the GUI for search results and are wondering what the state of the art is and what issues are involved, then this is the book for you. If you need a well-structured framework to help you understandhow internet search engines work, then this is the book for you. If you want to press the research forward on any of these topics and you are not already fluent in the literature, then this is the book for you.

Can be used in both for study and for a real world.
This book give you a very usable way in Information Retrieval. Before I read this book, my knowledge in IR was almost zero. But after I finished, I can do an IR project in my grad program. This book also give you a modern concept in IR that you can apply in a real-use. But it requires some knowledge in Computer Science way.

This book suits IT professionals, Computer Scientists, and students in both grad and undergrad.

I have spent several weeks to read this book.

Editorial Review

Of all the tasks programmers are asked to perform, storing, compressing, and retrieving information are some of the most challenging--and critical to many applications. Managing Gigabytes: Compressing and Indexing Documents and Images is a treasure trove of theory, practical illustration, and general discussion in this fascinating technical subject.

Ian Witten, Alistair Moffat, and Timothy Bell have updated their original work with this even more impressive second edition. This version adds recent techniques such as block-sorting, new indexing techniques, new lossless compression strategies, and many other elements to the mix. In short, this work is a comprehensive summary of text and image compression, indexing, and querying techniques. The history of relevant algorithm development is woven well with a practical discussion of challenges, pitfalls, and specific solutions.

This title is a textbook-style exposition on the topic, with its information organized very clearly into topics such as compression, indexing, and so forth. In addition to diagrams and example text transformations, the authors use "pseudo-code" to present algorithms in a language-independent manner wherever possible. They also supplement the reading with mg--their own implementation of the techniques. The mg C language source code is freely available on the Web.

Alone, this book is an impressive collection of information. Nevertheless, the authors list numerous titles for further reading in selected topics. Whether you're in the midst of application development and need solutions fast or are merely curious about how top-notch information management is done, this hardcover is an excellent investment. --Stephen W. Plain

Reviews (11)

Worst Book in the world!Not recommend!
Very very poorly written book.
I would say, this book is "pointer book".It always refer to examples many pages back where you have to flip back and forth and gets repetitive and you will get dizzy and don't get anything at the end.You won't get the information (key word) that you need just reading the topic.Again, it always back and forward.
Explanation, calculation of eg. are not clear, and organize.Numbers are suddendly appeared and doesn't explain how to get it or where to get.Overall, the worst book and I'm very sorry for the students that using that book.

Understanding Databases
This book helps you understand how databases works. The second half of the book explains how data is stored (100 pages), how indexes are built (100 pages), query processing (150 pages), transaction management (100 pages), and durability and recovery (50 pages). This is one of the best book, if not the best, on database implementation.

The first half of the book is about databases from the user's perspective (e.g. SQLs). Although I was mainly interested in the second half, I found the first half to be an excellent reference on SQL.

Reviews (20)

Best introduction I know
It is very easy to collect huge volumes of data - social statistics, bank records, biological data, and more - but very hard to pull useful facts out of the heap. This book is about processing large volumes of data in ways that let simple descriptions emerge.

This is an introductory level book, aimed at someone with reasonably good programming skills. A little facility with statistics might help, but certainly isn't necessary. The book starts gently, with some very basic questions: what is data mining exactly, when there seem to be so many definitions for the term? What is a data warehouse, and how does it differ from a database? Next, the authors address the data itself in terms of quality, usability, and organization for efficient access. The central chapters, 4 thhrough 8, address various kinds of query specification, kinds of relationships to extract, correlations, clustering, and classification. None of the discussions is especially deep. All, however, are presented in pseudocode or simple math that can easily be translated into working code. The careful reader learns a few basic principles that work well in many contexts: entropy maximization, Bayesian analysis, and simple stats. It may be surprising to see how little of normal statistical analysis is used. I suspect the authors assume that stats-savvy readers will already know how to apply significance testing, and that stats-naive readers don't need the distraction. The last chapters discuss complex data, where the best structure for the data and the questions to be asked of it are not at all obvious, and tools and applications used in data mining.

The book is nicely laid out as a textbook, with an orderly summary, problem set, and bibliography at the end of each chapter. The bibliography is more than just a list of names and authors - it actually helps the reader decide which references will give the best description of each of the chapter's topics.

This is a clear, usable introduction to data mining: the data it uses, the questions it answers, and the techniques for connecting them. It gives codable detail for lots of techniques, and prepares the reader for more advanced discussions. I recommend it very highly.

//wiredweird

Data Mining Fundamentals
Data Mining conjures up many myths - if you are interested in digging deeper and evaluate if data mining can server your business needs, start with this book.

This book does not go into the depth that could assist readers in performing data mining. This is a starter book that prod in the right direction without any unnecessary fluff.

Data mining is about observing and understanding the data - it is not a straight mathematical or scientific skill set. Specific algorithms can assist in data mining - a significant challenge, very often, is getting and preparing the data to get it to a state where data mining can be performed. This book focuses on the algorithmic side of the equation.

Reviews (1)

Editorial Review

Fortunately, most developers and end users never have to think about how database queries actually work. For those who want to know what happens under the hood, Principles of Database Query Processing for Advanced Applications provides a textbook-style guide to an important area of database theory--how queries work in a variety of databases, and the strategies and algorithms used to optimize them.

The book starts out on familiar ground, outlining the basics of relational databases, such as SQL and query optimization. After providing this foundation, the book quickly ventures into more cutting-edge turf, escorting readers through the emerging world of object-oriented databases (a much richer field, where the rules of optimization are not yet agreed upon). The guide delves into other areas where developers are likely to have to adopt a do-it-yourself approach to database design, including distributed database systems; multi-database systems, where data from several databases needs to be joined as efficiently as possible; and parallel-processing systems, where queries can be processed in parallel.

Isbn: 1558605800
Sales Rank: 1177170
Subjects:  1. Computer Bks - Data Base Management    2. Computer Books: General    3. Database Management - General    4. Database management   

Isbn: 0070701369
Subjects:  1. Computer Books: Operating Systems    2. Database Engineering   

Reviews (15)

Very nice book
I only bought this book because I needed to get an image of how fixed length records are implemented using C++. The book answered my question and provided me with examples. The examples compiled without a problem.

4 stars instead of 5, because I had to write my own Makefile in order to compile. Aparently, presented makefiles were designed to compile all examples at once, and I only needed a little piece of that.

Also, the information is a bit scattered around the book and it is not always easy to find what you need. But it is there, so you just need to work on it. After all, this subject is not covered at all in other books, so I would say it is a must have book for any programmer who works with files.

easy to use
i love this book...used it in my file structures course obviously, and i found it very useful

Plenty of great information, could have been presented bette
This text was used for a junior-level File Manipulation Techniques course.We skipped around quite a bit in this book and did not use any of the C++/Unix material.I think (and I'm sure my professor does) that this book could be stripped down a quite a bit to present more topics when used for the classroom.What is presented is done well.This is a well-rounded text that should appeal to students and professionals alike.However, from the student's perspective, there is a lot of superfluous material.It is still one of the best, if not then it is the best, book on file structures and algorithms.

The programs for class were in Visual Basic .NET .It was not hard to adapt sections from the text when writing programs for a different language.

Our class moved through the book as follows:chapters 1-4 (introduction to external storage, files of records); start of chapter 8 (cosequential processes); chapters 5 and 6 (record access, insertion and deletion); end of chapter 8 (sorting large files); chapter 11 (hashing); chapter 7 and 9 (indexing and B-trees).