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Home -> Community -> Mailing Lists -> Oracle-L -> RE: Useful Oracle books
Anthony,
Excellent remarks. However, you seem to pitting theory against practicality in a way that does not allow them to coexist. As Date would say, "Theory is practical!" That is actually one of his chapter names. Your example of preventing duplicates is a great case in point. What is the meaning of a result set with duplicates? What can you do with it? If I see three identical rows, meaning there is nothing returned to differentiate them, how can I, or my client use that information? I may as well just do a count.
What you find anal I find brilliant. Every "i" is dotted and every "t" is crossed in Date's logic. It has symmetry and completeness I have rarely found elsewhere.
Look at it this way: you may argue that there are times when we should break away from the theoretical to get the practical accomplished. But every time you "break away" from the theory, you making an exception you will have to keep track of and account for. Yes, you can duplicate data to prevent joins. But make sure you have a trigger to handle the extra update, etc., etc. Sometimes it's worth it, sometimes it gets out of hand.
I enjoyed your remarks.
Thanks,
Mike
-----Original Message-----
From: Anthony Molinaro [mailto:amolinaro_at_wgen.net]
Sent: Thursday, May 27, 2004 3:54 PM
To: oracle-l_at_freelists.org
Subject: 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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