Re: New to Databases-books on databases

Larry Coon wrote:

>
>
> I taught with Silbershatz four times, and it never went well.
> Lots of typographical errors, and lots of concepts glossed
> over. The feedback I got from students was that they weren't
> getting a lot out of it. I ended up using the book as no
> more than background reading. For students who were looking
> for more, I told them to look at either Date (for a more
> in-depth approach) or Celko's Data and Databases & SQL for
> Smarties (for a less rigorous approach). I got good feedback
> from students regarding all three.
>

I have had good luck teaching with the Date, Silberschatz, and Navathe books but I get better feedback from Connolly and Begg. I had good luck with a a data modeling book (Schmidt) combined with SQL Server for Professionals (Viera) which included a fair amount of database theory and ANSI SQL.

>
> My department just adopted Fundamentals of Database Systems
> by Elmasri & Navathe. I haven't read the entire thing --
> so far I've just spent a weekend with it, but it seems to
> be clear, thorough and current. It gets into a lot of stuff
> (mining, warehousing, web-based) that other books omit, and
> its coverage of non-relational models seems good. Its more
> rigorous than Celko, but less so than Date (though it's not
> lacking in rigor when explaining relational algebra, tuple
> calculus or normalization). I'm looking forward to teaching
> with it this fall.
>
> Larry Coon
> University of California
> larry_at_assist.org
> and lmcoon_at_home.com

David Olsen Received on Mon Aug 13 2001 - 20:03:10 CEST