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Joe Celko's Data and Databases: Concepts in Practice Review by Lex van de Pol
A bit chaotic, but nice to read
The author starts with saying: "This book is a collection of ideas about the nature of data and databases". Perhaps this is the reason that it is a bit chaotic, there is no red line throughout the book. But I found some of the sections very interesting, like the data structures and relational tables. I would recommend the book to everyone who would like to explore the ideas behind relational databases and who wants to become a bit more advanced. But do not take it for granted all he says. Some of it points are discussible and everybody can have his own opinion, like the use of intelligent and surrogate keys. I like surrogate keys very much. Users always want to change their typing errors, no matter if it is the primary key and has some child records attached to it.
There is one thing I do not like that much in his books. His likes to show that he knows a lot or knows where to find it, without any use for the book. This irritates me a bit. For example, why on earth list the axioms of intuitionist mathematics. I suppose I am one of the few readers who heard about intuitionism before and it is of certainly no help in this book. It is not there for the purposes of the book! Or another example, section 1.2.2 tells a bit about bad math. He tries to show that reporters cannot do simple math. But why does he assume there is a linear relation between weight and burned calories? May be there is a fixed amount of calories that you always burn, no matter what you are doing. I am not an expert on calories, but his logic of showing somebody's errors is not always correct. The correct answer for this calorie problem should be: we do not know and the 'proof' of the reporter is wrong. This does not mean the proposition is wrong! Another mathematical error, he writes that: "The idea of a limit is that there is a value that the sum never exceeds". Well, this is the definition of a upperbound. In case the function is non-decreasing the smalles upperbound will be the limit, it is easy to proof this. Of course, this is not a math book, but if you use the techniques you should be correct.
However, still a nice book to have and Joe mailed me always back when I had a remark or question. This care deservers one extra star!