In the SQL database community, Joe Celko is a well-known columnist and purveyor of valuable insights. In Joe Celko's SQL for Smarties: Advanced SQL Programming, he picked up where basic SQL training and experience leaves many database professionals and offers tips, techniques, and explanations that help readers extend their capabilities to top-tier SQL programming. Although Celko denies that the book is about database theory, but he alluded often to sustain the theory of practical points. Celko covers all aspects of database design, optimization, and manipulation, with easy to understand explanation of key issues such as why not to use too many nulls, how to use practical normalization, and how to optimize the query. Plain Topics covered: database design and normalization, SQL data types, querying, grouping, set operations, optimization, data scaling, and encoding.