LEARN SQL AND SAVE YOURSELF A LOT OF TIME
Merlin,
I agree with your advice about SQL, but the book (at least for this
American) would not be in my top ten.
My guess is that you are a Brit, correct? The book uses what I am told are
Briticisms such as "tuples", etc. That alone should put off most folks on
this side of the pond.
I cannot say that I read the whole thing but I did go over a couple of
chapters of interest to me and found the book's advice to be fine for the
ivory tower, but not practical in my experience. All those
Entity-Relationship Diagrams! If I followed the advice in that book I would
never be on-time or on-budget.
And for $61.00 (street price) you would expect a better index.
Admittedly I didn't read the whole thing, but I think the academics will
love it and the practicing programmers will find it less utilitarian. Of
course, this is just my opinion and your mileage may vary.
I appologize for the dissent. If I didn't have such a strong opinion about
the book I would have remained silent, but I wouldn't want my brother (and
sister) VBers to spend that kind of money and be burdened with (IMO) such
unrealistic advice.
That's my two pence. Anyone else seen this book?
Michael
SQL is a very powerful language in itself. Remember you can create, and
completely control a database with SQL including all conditional updates.
DDL or Data Definition Language. This is what creates the structure of the
database, i.e CREATE TABLE statements.
DML or Data Manipulation Language. This is what controls the data within the
database, i.e SELECT statements etc.
LEARN SQL, BELIEVE ME IT IS A STRONG LANGUAGE.
This is a fantastic book if you are serious about developing databases.
It also covers database web technologies for those who need to know about
DSN connections.
