Re: What is The Current Definitive Book for Database

Sted Alana <Sted_Alana_at_hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> What Is The Current Definitive Book for Database Systems?
>
>
>>Two books to read are:
>
> >"An Introduction to Database Systems" C.J. Date
> >Addison Wesley; ISBN: 0201684195
>
>An introduction? that doesnt sound very definitive.

This is "An Introduction" in the academic publishing tradition, where the simpler the book title, the more detailed the contents. Be very afraid of "An elementary introduction to the principles of ..." :-)

>>"Transaction Processing" Jim Gray, Andreas Reuter
>> Morgan Kaufmann; ISBN: 1558601902
>
>This seems to be very specific, but thanks for your suggestion.

It gives excellent coverage of the underlying technology, how transactions work, why they're needed, how they're implemented etc.

It's not as important as Date if you're only concerned with the high-level design of a database system. However, if you have to work with DBMSes at all levels, I'm a great believer in understanding the fundamentals of a system to understand the high level effects.

(As an example, you see a "latch wait" in Oracle. You can either follow a cook-book tuning recipe; or you can try to work out what the latch is for, why it's being used, what is contending for it, and then work on what to do about it. The former is easier, the latter works.)

>I ask this question because there are so many database books out there,
>which makes it difficult to decide which one purchase. Surely, there must be
>a definitive book for database where all serious database employees/managers
>should own.

Yes, Date.

-- 
Andrew Mobbs - http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~andrewm/