This book places a strong emphasis on good design practice, allowing readers to master design methodology in an accessible, step-by-step fashion. In this book, database design methodology is explicitly divided into three phases: conceptual, logical, and physical. Each phase is described in a separate chapter with an example of the methodology working in practice. Extensive treatment of the Web as an emerging platform for database applications is covered alongside many code samples for accessing databases from the Web including JDBC, SQLJ, ASP, ISP, and Oracle's PSP. A thorough update of later chapters covering object-oriented databases, Web databases, XML, data warehousing, data mining is included in this new edition. A clear introduction to design implementation and management issues, as well as an extensive treatment of database languages and standards, make this book an indispensable, complete reference for database professionals.

Average Customer Review: ( 43 customer reviews )
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.

These authors have clearly been practitioners. It shows throughout the book.

9 of 9 found the following review helpful:

Comprehensive Book on Database Management SystemsNov 03, 1998

Comprehensive - that is the first word that comes to my mind after reading the book Database Systems: A Practical Approach to Design, Implementation and Management. If you are in search of a book that will help you in mastering the subject of Database Management Systems this is it. The coverage is exhaustive and in-depth. While reading the table of contents and preface, I thought that the authors were very ambitious in the scope and are promising too much. But after reading the book, I am glad to say that I was mistaken - the authors have very successfully delivered whatever they have promised and more.

The book is ideal for a student of database management systems. It is also a valuable book for the practicing professional. In fact the people, who are in the database profession, who uses databases or develop applications involving database management systems, will find this book invaluable and will be able to appreciate it much more than a beginner. It is a connoisseur's delight.

The authors assume nothing. Each and every concept is built from scratch. The level of detail is so impressive that one can think this book as a collection of books of various database-related topics. For example, the section on SQL is so comprehensive that, it can stand on its own as a separate book. Such detailed coverage is found for all the topics in the book and is one of its best features. The case studies, worked examples and the presentation style, the concepts in boxes, excellent illustration, review questions, etc. will go a long way in improving the usefulness of the book.

Another feature that makes this book stand out form other books on database management, is its coverage of the latest technologies. The chapters of Distributed Database Management, Object-Oriented and Object-Relational Database Management Systems, Web based database applications, Data Warehousing, OLAP and Data Mining, etc. will prove invaluable to the students as well as the practitioners, novices as well as experts.

When dealing with theoretical concepts like data modeling, normalization, it is the usual practice of most authors either to go too mathematical or to gloss over the subject. This book is by far the best in this respect as it takes an optimum approach. The explanations are not too mathematical, but the topics are explained in sufficient detail, so that the reader will have a very good understanding of the concepts like normalization, functional dependency, etc.

Four most useful features of this book are the logical organization chart (suggesting the various paths that one can follow), the references, the suggested readings and the index. When reading or studying a book of this size - 1093 pages - these features are quite invaluable.

The usefulness of the book could have been improved if an electronic version was provided. It would have made references easy. Also the Deductive database model is not covered. An appendix on the database related sites on the Internet would have been nice. Also a description of the major database systems and vendors could have been included.

So in the final analysis, this is a must read and must have book for every database professional. For students it is a valuable course material. For professionals it is a very good self-study guide. For practitioners it an excellent refresher and a good way to keep track of the latest developments in the database field. An excellent buy!

Copyright 1998, Pegasus Book Club

9 of 10 found the following review helpful:

Good, readable book on Database Management SystemsJul 03, 2005
By Bryan J. Higgs
I am struck by the types of comments that have been made about this book. There seem to be two camps:

1) Those who think it's a very well structured, interesting, informative book

2) Those who think it's a terrible book.

Those in the latter category seem to think that the terms 'tuples' (rows), 'relations' (tables), 'attributes' (columns) are somehow Britishisms, because the book is written by authors from a Scottish university. In fact, those terms are used in the database literature, and come from the mathematical foundation behind relational databases.

I use this book in a course I teach on Database Management Systems, and I have found it easier to read and use than many other academic database books. The first time I taught the course, I inherited the choice of text book from my predecessor; it was a disaster as a textbook! I substituted this book, and my students seem to like it reasonably well.

Because you can't reasonably cover the material in this book in a single semester, I do think that it might be better to break the book up into two smaller books. That way, the first of the two might be more usable in a single semester course. Not all colleges necessarily have a two semester sequence, and if they don't, this book is overkill for just a single semester.

19 of 24 found the following review helpful:

Excellent and comprehensive database bookSep 18, 2005
By Chris S. Johnson "C.S. Johnson"
This book isn't for the faint of heart. It's not for someone who wants a quick understanding of how to create a database. This book is for someone who, whether student or practitioner, wants a completely thorough treatment of the topic of databases, with virtually no topic left out, and with enough detail and examples to apply the techniques in practice.

It will be most valuable if you have at least some experience or exposure to databases, but if you're really are interested in the topic, it's not necessary. There were a few places in the opening chapters that briefly spoke to concepts not yet introduced, or assumed some IT background, though this is rare, and the studious reader could use the index to temporarily jump ahead and gain sufficient understanding.

That said, this is the most comprehensive book on databases, from idea through implementation, logical through physical, including optimization, that I have ever read. There isn't a topic that I've come across in my experience with database related projects, or my own attempts to create business tools using a database, that this book doesn't appropriately address.

Having managed numerous IT projects using Oracle, DB2, and SQL Server, I already had a good foundation in databases. But then I found myself creating a few databases myself using MS Access (Jet and MSDE) and then SQL Server. However, it's one thing to manage a project that uses a database, but quite another to be doing the design and development oneself. I experienced moments of frustration when I couldn't use some of the views/queries to perform updates to the base tables, and when I couldn't get some views/queries to work as intended, or sometimes wasn't sure how to start to author a solution (I learned that some of my relationships were highly recursive and that is a weakness of the relational model, and solved by a little bit of code). This book gave me the insights as to why each was the case, as well how to solve all of them. There's nothing like experiencing a, "Why won't this work!", followed by, "Oh, that's why.", followed by, "That was easy to fix." That's what this book did, when numerous other books on Access and SQL Server were too high level.

Some have indicated this book to be boring, and padded with unnecessary text. It isn't exciting like a thriller, but it's not supposed to be. Its intention is to educate, and it does that exceedingly well. If you have a thirst for knowledge or passion for databases or information systems, you'll love it. If you're a student with no choice but to take a course that uses this text, but are otherwise uninterested in databases, you would probably rather be using a more high level and less expensive book. However, if you plan a career in IT, don't sell this book back. I assure you that you will use it in the future.

Someone else didn't like the writing style of the book because the authors are from the United Kingdom. This is rarely evident, but when it is, it doesn't detract: flat=apartment, pound=money, Glasgow=city.

The best, most thorough treatment of database systems that I have ever read, and has been extremely helpful.

5 of 5 found the following review helpful:

Open the doors to RDBMSOct 18, 2003
By Juan J. Casero
This book opened the doors of relational database management systems to me. Prior to reading it I had some general experience with MySQL but an incomplete understanding of the subject. Much to my surprise I found I really liked working with a RDBMS's so I began searching for a book that would give me a solid introdcution to the theory and practice. I think this book fit the bill. After reading it I was ready to tackle a data migration project from Unify to Informix. Now I work as a database programmer. I have since purchased and read other RDBMS books about Informix (the RDBMS I have worked most with) but I find that I still refer to this text from time to time to clear up some minor points of confusion. This book will not make you an expert with RDBMS's but it will give you the background necessary to build up your confidence so you can tackle other tasks. At times the prose can be a bit drawn out but those sections are few and far between. Be advised though that this book uses conceptual/practical approach to database design. While it provide some examples using MS Access and Oracle I find the conceptual discussions more interesting and indeed more useful. With this foundation I was able to begin working with Informix Dynamic Server-an RDBMS that is clearly not the focus of this book.

See all 43 customer reviews on Amazon.com