Databases Books

This is a essential book for beginners and advanced users. DBAs can have good references to implement ASM without problems. There are many information not found in conventional forums.

Other than Oracle documentation, this is the only ASM source of information that I know of. This book is a relatively fast read and comes in at under 300 pages.

The first chapter is very helpful and I learned some information about disk storage that I did not know. I am more comfortable talking with SAN and system administrators now. They also get the feel that I know what I am talking about. After the first chapter, the book dives right into ASM architecture and management. Each chapter is well written and easy to understand. This book also covers the new features in Oracle 11 and you can see that Oracle is dedicated to maturing ASM. ASM is here to stay and it will gain in popularity.

One of the areas that I thought could have been better is the discussion and explanation of RAC, ASM and how the cluster registry is affected. It would have been nice to have a chapter on OCFS just as a supplement. Some shops will utilize both OCFS and ASM. OCFS will host the OCR and voting file as ASM can not be used.

If you are new to ASM or you are an expert, this book is a good read. If you are new to ASM will get more out of it (obviously) since it covers everything you need to know to install and maintain ASM. Fortunately since this is the only ASM book (as of today) and it is great source of information you will not be wasting your time. This book comes highly recommended.

George Loewenthal
Denver, Colorado

Oracle Automatic Storage Management Under-the-Hood & Practical Deployment Guide.This is a must have book for those who are working on ASM or who are planning to implement ASM.Chapters like "ASM Space Allocation and Rebalance","ASMLIB Concepts and Overview","Managing Database in ASM" and "ASM and Storage Array Configuration" gives you in detail information.

After reading the book I can say that now I know what actually is ASM/How it works/How to Implement ASM and I don't need any more training on ASM.


-MOHAMMED MOINUDDIN UMAIR
Senior Tuning Consultant,LEHMAN BROTHERS,NEW JERSEY

One of the authors of this book is the director of development for ASM. Who would know more about it than the developers? The other 2 implement it in many different environments. Lastly, the technical reviewer Charles Kim wrote the 11g new features book for Apress. There could not be a better group of people to write a book about ASM and review it than these individuals.

I would highly recommend this book for any DBA that will be working with ASM and / or RAC. The high performance, ease of use, and low cost make it a very attractive solution. This book will teach you everything you need to know about ASM (that's why it's called an "Under-the-Hood" guide). It also makes an excellent reference.

Someone recenlty mentioned that Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM) is probably the best thing ever happened to Oracle next to SQL*Plus. I would second that. However there was no definitive text available in the market and Nitin & co perfectly filled the gap with this classic one.

This book starts with the basics of the storage technology and moves towards the center of the ASM with deep discussions on ASM data structures, ASM in operation and ASM troubleshooting. Nitin probably probably knows more about ASM than anyone I know and excels in explaining the complex technologies in easy to understand manner. You will immensely benefit from his wisdom and real life experience.

A must read for Oracle Storage Administrators and DBAs working with RAC/ASM.

I'm a working DBA but my exposure to PL/SQL has been light. This book not only teaches how to write the code but introduces better ways to perform typical tasks. Easily worth the money.

This book is a must have for DBA's!

It highlights so many of the powerful features and functionality of the Oracle Database, encapsulated within the PL/SQL language, that the first 5 chapters is worth the entire cost of the book!
(Especially Chapter 3 - Table Functions!)

Not only is this a must have for DBA's, it should also be required reading for PL/SQL developers, data warehouse developers and database architects alike.

It's no surprise that learning Oracle is one of the most challenging things to do for any person that works in the IT field. This massive database application has a long and storied history, becoming one of the de facto standards for storing database on massive scales. A huge chunk of the web is stored on Oracle systems, and it's a system that keeps growing and expanding over time.

With the complexity involved, it's nice that a book like this has been written so that DBAs can quickly get their feet wet with Oracle and learn the ins and outs in an efficient manner. At a size of 400+ pages, this is a nice guide to learn the basics of becoming an experienced Oracle DBA. Containing 8 chapters that cover the basics, this book covers Oracle up to Database 10g Release 2. It's up to date, written well, and a perfect companion resource on any DBAs desk.

**** RECOMMENDED

Simply put, this book is a must have for any Oracle DBA. Many new and advanced features within Oracle are implemented using PL/SQL. As an Oracle DBA, you must have a firm grasp of this powerful language and how to take advantage of features in Oracle10g that include:

*) Security
*) Auditing
*) Encryption
*) Optimizing Performance
*) Automating Tasks
*) Scheduling

To start, Oracle PL/SQL for DBAs provides a solid foundation of the PL/SQL language including syntax, data types, cursors, control logic, exception handling, abstract data types, procedures, functions, and packages. The introduction is well written and packed with many explanations and examples. The book continues further to describe in great detail the use of cursors and table functions in chapters 2 and 3.

At this point, the Oracle DBA should have a firm understanding of the language and move on to more DBA-specific features that involve the use of PL/SQL. Chapter 4 explorers the fundamentals of encryption and how to implement advanced encryption techniques within Oracle. The chapter focuses on the use of the PL/SQL packages DBMS_CRYPTO (Oracle10g R1 and higher) and DBMS_OBFUSCATION_TOOLKIT (earlier releases prior to Oracle10g R1). Algorithms like DES and Triple DES along with other encryption fundamentals like hashing and key management are explained in easy to understand terms and illustrations.

Chapter 5 is dedicated to Row-Level Security. The authors do a fantastic job of explaining policies and how they work. Once again, the extensive amount of accurate examples is what makes this chapter easy to understand and implement. Special attention is paid to the use of the PL/SQL package DBMS_RLS and using it to create policies and control user access. A special section is provided on troubleshooting common errors with row-level security along with how to interpret and resolve them.

Chapter 6 explains the use of Fine-Grained Auditing (FGA). Like previous chapters, the authors lay the foundation for why, how, and when to use this powerful feature along with specifics to how it works with different Oracle releases. The DBA will learn just what is captured with FGA and how to customize it to their environment. FGA makes use of the PL/SQL procedure DBMS_FGA. Detailed examples are provided for creating and editing policies along with methods for administrating FGA.

Chapter 7 deals with generating random numbers and how to take advantage of DBMS_RANDOM. Here you will find great explanations of how to check for randomness and following statistical patterns. Again, all of this is put together with accurate examples.

Chapter 8 was my favorite - Scheduling. This chapter focuses on DBMS_SCHEDULER - Oracle10g's replacement for DBMS_JOB. Sections are also provided on how to prioritize jobs with the use of Database Resource Manager (DBMS_RESOURCE_MANAGER).

I enjoyed this book from front to back. Very well thought out explanations, real world examples and illustrations.

Are you a developer or database administrator? If you are, then this book is for you! Authors Arup Nanda and Steven Feuerstein, have done an outstanding job of writing a book that allows you to take advantage of the PL/SQL-based functionality in the Oracle database that is the most critical for DBAs.

Nanda and Steven Feuerstein, begin by providing a whirlwind tour of the PL/SQL language, touching on all of the topics DBAs will need to become familiar with--from the basics of the PL/SQL block structure, identifier construction, and program data declarations, to the use of control and error-handling statements, to the construction of procedures, functions, packages, and triggers in PL/SQL. Then, the authors describe PL/SQL cursors and how you can improve database performance by taking advantage of such features as cursor reuse, cursor soft-parsing and soft-closing, and various characteristics of implicit cursors. Next, they explore the use of functions that can be used as data sources for queries and that are used frequently in Extraction, Transformation, and Loading (ETL) operations. The authors then explain how you can use Oracle's tools to build basic encryption and key management systems to protect sensitive data. They continue to explain how you can define policies on database tables so that you can restrict which rows particular users can see or change in those tables. Then, the authors show you how you can extend traditional Oracle auditing to capture both database changes and queries. Next, they discuss situations in which you may need to generate values. Finally, they describe the use of the DBMS_SCHEDULER package in scheduling jobs to be performed at regular intervals.

This most excellent book is here to help you get your job done. More importantly, this book is focused squarely on the language topics of special concern to DBAs.

Book contained excellent examples; I have read several PL/SQL books and found this one very insightful especially for developers. You will be able to tell that the authors are bonafide developers relating real experiences; they not only explain the technical issues but how they applied in the real-world applications - highly recommended for serious developers.

This book is a great guide to PL/SQL, especially for DBA's and non-programmers. The reference section is especially good, and I can quickly find PL/SQL snippets to assist me.

This book takes you through some really great examples and includes everything you need to know about PL/SQL. I use it as a reference all day long when writing my code.

This book is very well structured and easy to learn from. The content is easy to read, good examples and very referenceable.

I highly recommend this book. The only issue is its availability, I find it hard to believe that the publishers have not cashed in on this book (did n't republish - currently out of print) as it is a real winner and a gem to have.

Listed below are the chapters.

1. PL/SQL At A Glance
2. Writing Simple Routines
3. Program Flow Control
4. Accessing the Database
5. Complex Datatypes
6. Creating Programs
7. Using Object Types
8. PL/SQL In Different Environments
9. PL/SQL And Application Performance
10. PL/SQL Fundamentals
11. Blocks, Stored Programs, Packages, Database Triggers And Stored Types
12. Declarations
13. Procedural Constructs
14. Built In Functions
15. Oracle 8 Supplied Packages
16. Extended SQL And PL/SQL Support
17. External File I/O And Background Job Control
18. Support of LOB Datatypes
19. Event Notification And Intersession Communication Support
20. Advanced Queuing Support
21. Miscellaneous Packages

This is the best book I have come across during my pursuing PL/SQL. Its style of gradually building up of the various concept makes it an intersting reading of an otherwise quite boaring subject. I wish to make a suggestion to enhance the value addition from the book. It would be a great help if the tables used in the examples are also provided with the book so that the reader can actually write the codes and see the results for himself rather than trying to visualise the outcome.

I have recently began developing in Paradox 7, and bought Mike Prestwoods Paradox 7 Programming Unleashed. It is great. It covers, I think, every area of Object Pal. I have not read every page yet, because some of the topics, like DDE, DLL and OLE are something I will start exploring later. But it makes it clear that you can use many Windows 95 features.

The book first explain the area to be covered, and then gives you lots of small examples, that you can test, or just read. It strengthen the idea that you should write not much code, but effective.

Among many other things it gives you several ways to pass variables, important but difficult for the newbee.

The book is even fun to read, and really helps you getting into OPAL. I strongly recommend it.

This book is full of practical examples and gives you a clearer idea of the unique nature of Paradox's ObjectPAL language.

Mike has done an excellent job of exposing the details of Paradox, and putting it all together into a readable format that can be used as a reference by beginner and advanced programmers alike.

The strong point of this book is it's index, which is beyond complete, it is intense.

Over the years, I have purchased nearly every Paradox for Windows books I could get my hands on. Things have to be worded just right in order for it to sink into my thick skull. This book is excellent in every way. The examples and explainations along the way "Can't Be Beat". You can't go wrong if you intend to program in Paradox for Windows, especially if you use this book. I'm still waiting for this writer to produce a Paradox version 8 book. Let's hope its soon!

I have Mike Prestwood's since Paradox 5. All contents are really my advisor whenever I want any essential information. In the next version of Paradox, I would like Mike to add some more feature on OLE, OLE AUTO and BLOB field in Interbase table or, in other word, Paradox for Client/Server Version.

This book really helped me to have a kickstart to become a professional access programmer.... it contains the best tricks to do whatever you want with Access....Besides the writer has writen the book in a way that is very comprehensive for every one....After this book I`m a real fan of Rick Dobson...He knows how to lead you to make you professional....

Being a seasoned Access Veteran, I found the book most helpful in explaining ADO (New in Access 2000), explaining class modules and using Access with SQL Server. Most MS Press books in the past that have dealt with Access / VBA have been fairly "light" on these subjects, but this one goes in depth on these subjects. Also the chapter on XML does a good job introducing the platform to novice developers.

Next to The Access Developer's Handbook Series by Litwin, Getz etc..and F. Scott Barker's Power Programming, I would say this is a "must have" for any serious Access Developer.

This book builds on Dobson's prior book "SQL Server with Access 2000" and ferrets out good solutions to some everyday needs like image processing and dynamically populated combo boxes. I'm a small business owner whose time is precious, but needs to get big picture solutions so not to be reworking stop gap efforts to streamline my operations.

Being pressured to grow my application to many users (both trusted LAN and anonymous Web) and being comfortable with the graphical interfaces of Access, I found the the need to learn about programming ADO recordsets, Data Access Pages and ASP while determining the best solution. I have been overwelmed by the flexibility of MS solutions and options that are possible and needed some guidance in plain language to explain such terms as Objects, Properties and Methods, and what they meant to be programmed. Chapter 2 does a good job of that which is followed by a useful summary of the ADO library. Data Access Projects are lined out well along with some practical tips to incorporating SQL Server 2000 as a data source. He further builds upon this model and shows how to dynamically (!) create web pages from the Access Project using MS Frontpage XP, the resultants being Active Server Pages! I have found while the Access 2002 graphical tools are helpful, Dobson explores how to control the code behind the power of the XP Office release.

I have found the code to be tight and well commented. I'd urge anyone interested in harnessing the full power and speed of deployment of Access 2002 and the Office XP suite to add this book to their "How To" library.

This complete reference book is actually three books in

one. It is the clearest available introduction to VBA

coding. It provides explanations with a huge collection

of Access VBA code. And it is a thorough presentation

of what is new and powerful in Access 2002, especially

concerning integration with SQL Server.

This book is just the thing for anyone who wants to

become a serious Access user or developer. It is the

answer to the prayers of many Access users who have

wanted a reference that would finally take them from

the limited GUI Access interface into the more full and

flexible features of VBA coding. The coding in this

very large book is so extensive that I bet you could,

if you wanted to, do every future Access project with

just code and without reference to the GUI interface.

You can tell that Rick Dobson loves to code and to pass

on what he has learned.

The explanations are very readable and give you the

background necessary to actually understand why things

work the way they do. Much attention is given to

keeping you out of trouble by conveying a very clear

understanding of operational issues not covered

elsewhere. This includes successful integration of

different versions of Access and SQL Server, getting

the reference libraries correct, and even using Access

with FrontPage (now included in Office XP

Professional).

If this reference indicates the way Microsoft Press

books are headed, then I am going to look to add more

of them to my reference collection in the future.

Clarity, comprehensive, and Code, code, code!

I have read your book and applied some of the programming methods mentioned in it and found it very helpful.

I have 20 years of software development experience mainly in the
mainframe area both here in Sydney, Australia and Boston, Mass. I recently decided to start my own consulting firm and develop business applications using Access. In the past four months, I have used your book to learn Access in order to develop an
inventory and billing software package for one of my clients. I can honestly tell you that I learned a lot from your book, and I can even say that without your book, I would've not been able to finish the project.

If you are as clueless about SPSS as I am, you must buy this book. It has clear, concise instructions in language a layman can understand. If you want a more advanced manual because you already know the basics, you may want to look elsewhere (Tabachnik & Fidel's book would be the next step up from this one). This would be a great textbook for a Statistics course at either the undergrad or graduate levels. It also explains each type of statistic clearly with great examples. It covers t tests, ANOVAs, regression, and much more. It was great for me to be able to review the statistic I was going to use to ensure that I understood it.

If you want to go from a stupid to savvy about statistics, this is the book for you. No jargon, no obtuse references, just simple explanations and directions. I secretly credit this book with getting me through my Ph.D. Also,Darren George's willingness to answer questions and offer help via e-mail was invaluable. This book makes things so clear, that I am now able to explain statistics to others -- something that once would have seemed as likely as inventing a calorie-free shake. A must for any researcher in the social sciences.

I am a grad student working on my dissertation. I searched everywhere for an excellent and simple SPSS book. I was lost until I found yours. I have some of the others listed in the category; they are missing the step by step examples. I knew what I wanted to do, but did not know how to put into SPSS. They examples are CLEAR. There is even information about the statistics, so if you are unsure about assumptions for the type of test, you can check. Simple instructions and EXAMPLES FOR THE SCREEN. I love it.Thanks for putting together an excellent reference tool.

The book is extremely well written and is essential reading for anyone who wants to learn SPSS. It has great coverage of all major SPSS procedures except survival analysis. I highly recommend it!

Paul Mallery (my co-author) and I have gone to excruciating efforts, particularly on the first 16 chapters of this book, to create a tool that makes SPSS absolutely clear to the beginner. In the final 12 chapters our book explores more complex statistical procedures (log-linear models, factor analysis, discriminant analysis, multi-dimensional scaling, and others) in the identical format as the earlier chapters.

The comments by the individuals from Iowa and Minnesota reflect the many e-mails we have received on this book from, literally, all over the world. While we routinely recommend that anyone who uses the book first take a course in statistics, for anyone with reasonable math aptitude, the first 16 chapters should be understandable without ANY statistical background. If you are looking for a book that is comprehensive yet ultimately understandable for fundamental statistical procedures (data entry, data manipulation, frequencies, descriptives, chi-squares, t-tests, correlations, ANOVAs, simple linear and multiple regression analysis, graphs) but includes excellent coverage on the more advanced procedures we suggest that this book was made for you.

We, the authors, welcome your comments. These are considered carefully as we create new editions of the book.

This is an awesome book for someone that is new to SQL Server and needs to learn basic administration. The authors did a really good job of explaining the fundamentals in clear simple language.

I especially enjoyed the explanation of the storage engine. It made things clear to me that I didn't understand previously.

I had not touched a DB box in quite a while, and I was recently handed a SQL 2005 box to manage. This book pretty much covered everything I needed. The writing style is laid back and readable, and they get right to the point, without going off on all sorts tangents. The chapter on Automating Administrative Tasks (Chapter 8) was pure gold.

Good stuff.

I found this book offers exactly what I needed. I learned how to best manage my SQL 2005 Database Server. I found the information to be accurate and well written, an excellent reference that I've used many times. I really appreciated how the authors used real world experience to relay hard to understand concepts.

This book is for beginners. I'm a seasoned system engineer and have worked with SQL 2005 before. However not having any formal training I decided to get a book. I don't want to be a developer so I needed something that demonstrates SQL server 2005 from the admin side. This is book is perfect for that. It explains the major features a sys admin would want to know. Anything above what this book teaches, can be found on technet or doing a google search. So in conclusion, for a sys admin wanting to know SQL Server 2005, this book will serve your purposes very well...

Having taken several classes from Dan Wood I appreciate the years of practical experience these guys bring to the table. It is a very good, readable, and thorough introduction to MS SQL Server 2005. SQL 2005 is a big product with lots of intricacies. This is one of the best introductions to to it that I've read.

This is a well written book, code is easy to download, and a number of topics. All in all though, the writing is clear and easily understood so it's well worth the money...

I am a Java web/search programmer who wanted to "get into" text mining. I found this book an excellent resource for this. Text Mining is a field in which active research is still going on, and other Text Mining books I have looked at reflect this - the authors expect you to have a certain degree of mathematical background to understand what they are saying. This book explains briefly the math behind each of the approaches, but it focuses more on the algorithms that result from the math, so it is easier to read.

Of course, a side effect of this is that the approaches described are not necessarily the state of the art for solving any given problem, but once you get the basic approach to solving a problem, it is relatively easy to find and understand the documentation on the web for the more advanced approaches, since you now know what you are looking for and how it differs from your basic solution.

The book does have a (fairly long) chapter where it covers the math background necessary to get started with Text Mining. If you understand the stuff in there, you will actually be able to think up solutions to text mining problems that are unique to your own situation.

The algorithms in the book are in pseudo-code, but the book comes with a CD (or download from the author's sourceforge project textmine.sf.net) where you can see working Perl code.

Overall, I think this is one of the most useful books that I have purchased in a while. It should appeal most to programmer types who have programmed in their language(s) of choice for a while in areas other than text mining, wants to get into text mining, and doesn't want to spend a lot of time relearning high school and college math before starting off.

Text mining is one of the most exciting subjects of the web, and too few books are dealing with it. This one is one of them, and it gives quite a few examples of text mining applications, like spam filters or search engine ranking algorithms. The style is easy to follow, and the concepts easy to understand given some maths background.

However, I expected more details, and a richer content overall, thus the four stars. This is still a good book.

Software developers learn how to mine information on the Web and turn it into valuable data; but developers need to understand how data mining works. For a programmer's application-oriented review, Text Mining Application Programming is the item of choice: it reviews text data, how it's found, and how search engines locate and gather it. Next, it teaches how to build spiders to crawl the Web, how to use the information, and how to monitoring it. Perl developers will find its Perl-based code useful, but it's not necessary to know Perl to run the software herein. An excellent guide to mining the Net.

There is an old expression that half of knowing anything is knowing where to find it. And there is little more frustrating to be looking at 'My Computer' trying to find what you know you have stored in a file somewhere. Well, perhaps just as frustrating is to go to one of the search engines and try to find something that you know is there but just don't know the proper words to find it.

In this book Dr. Konchady talks about how to go find data that is in text form on your system, on your network or out on the web somewhere. It talks about search engines, but also about other techniques that can be used only by programming.

The CD that comes with the book contains several Perl software snippets that help to find named entities, parts of speech, phrases and gives a summary of text documents. This area includes developing web crawlers that can be adapted by individual users to go out and find specialized information. It further contains an Open Source software package called Text Mine that is designed for mining operations. In addition it has utilities to build and enhance Text Mine and utilities to build and manage MySQL database tables. This is an excellent book on everything from the basic hints and types through some of the mathematics that underlies text mining.

His section on the nature of an English language Question and Answer system is the best I've ever seen.

I have been working on a project to make some changes to MySQL server
operation. Learned a lot through code review & trial and error! Recently
purchased this book and it is excellent! Wish we had it months ago.

The author knows what he's talking about. Provides a great overview of the
architecture, file and subsystem layout. Also provides great information on using the 'built in' debug capability of the server -- very useful!

I was expecting to be disappointed, I was not. The content was right
on the mark for those folks interested on working on server internals.

Sasha knows the mysql code well, and he has done a fantastic job of presenting it. This is an important book for anyone who would like an enhanced understanding of mysql, including DBAs who might need a detailed understanding of locking or replication to. And it's a must-have for anyone working on a storage engine.

Sasha Pachev's UNDERSTANDING MYSQL INTERNALS: DISCOVERING AND IMPROVING A GREAT DATABASE provides clear insights into one of the most popular open source codes on the market. It comes from a former member of the MySQL development team, so offers the author's own insights into the program's creation and use, covering everything from communication protocols between client and server to the parser and optimizer that execute SQL commands, advantages and disadvantages of using threads, and more technical insights.

An excellent overview of the MySQL codebase, philosophy, and the design decisions that have made MySQL what it is today. Even though I have never touched the MySQL source before (it can be a daunting beast for the uninitiated), Sasha's explanations made me comfortable with the 'internals' and finally lifted the 'magic veil' off the engine. 'MySQL internals' has a perfect balance of high-level explanations, and low-level code samples to help you understand the inner workings of the database.

After reading this book you should be comfortable enough to tackle the source, and you'll also have deep understanding of the storage engines and how to configure them, how the query parser works, how the optimizer decides on the execution plan, and much more. This is a must read for any DBA, or a programmer who wants to see a great example of a high-performance, reliable UNIX server.

MySQL is assuming increased importance as an enterprise database and has become the de-facto standard with web hosting companies. A number of books have appeared in recent years, covering various aspects of MySQL. In Understanding MySQL Internals, Sasha Pachev, a MySQL-focused consultant and former member of the MySQL development team, takes us on a tour of how MySQL works and how it is built.

Starting with an overview of MySQL history and architecture, the book quickly moves us through working with the source code to build and run the product in a debugger. Drawing on his deep experience with the software, Mr. Pachev explains the coding conventions used to develop MySQL and why you should use them when modifying the software yourself.

The author delineates the different functional "modules" (a term he coined himself to better explain the database, technically speaking there are no defined modules in MySQL's architecture) of MySQL and how they interrelate. Herein lies the key to how this book teaches the reader the vast intricacy of such a complex piece of software. The author recognizes the subject is huge and the source code changing. What he does in the book is serve as our tour guide, driving us through the various areas and explaining as much relevant information as he reasonably can. He constantly illustrates key pieces of source code and data structures; but perhaps more importantly he makes reference to the actual source files utilized by each functional component of the system, while encouraging us to explore further on our own. His approach is very much "top down".

As he takes us on this tour, the author explains many of the design decisions behind the various MySQL components, often imparting the historical perspective behind them. I appreciate how, throughout the book, the author shares some of his "inside information" about MySQL's development. There is also a section where he examines the code stability of each module and speculates on what the future may hold for each module. The author's writing style is clear and easy to read. I found Understanding MySQL Internals interesting and fun, and surprisingly easy to read for a book covering such a sophisticated piece of software. The author also does a good job explaining the engineering trade-offs of different MySQL configurations. Speaking of configuration, the book shows you how to add your own configuration option to the mysqld daemon.

Chapter 7, the largest chapter in the book, is 41 pages long. It covers the MySQL storage engine interface. This chapter explains how to integrate your own custom storage engine into MySQL and contains the source code for two custom storage engine examples (one for MySQL 4.1, the other for version 5.1). You can download this source code from O'Reilly's web site. Despite this one long chapter, the book is surprising short, only 234 pages.

I believe this book has value outside of MySQL. It does a good job showing how MySQL is essentially a well designed piece of software: a high-performance, reliable Unix server. The book also touches on the multi-platform aspects of MySQL design. Those of you designing other types of server software may benefit from studying how MySQL is constructed.

This book isn't for everyone, but if you are serious about MySQL in particular or database software design in general then this title certainly deserves a look.

The book is excellent. I used it and understood it very easily. I would recommend it for anyone desiring to learn Microsoft Access.

Enjoyed using this book a lot! I would reccomend this book to all of my friends and neighbors.

Great book for a novice or one with more experience. Answered many of my questions quickly and easily. Highly recommended.

Great book for MS Access XP. Well written.

Well written with excellent illustrations. Easy to follow and excellent for anyone learning Access.