Databases Books

This is a good basic book for understanding the underworkings of Oracle's development tools. While SQL Forms is an old Oracle product, the tips are still relevant.

This book contains all the important information a developer would need to become more productive using Oracle Forms. It is an outstanding collection of tips and techniques and examples that range from beginner to power-user level. You will understand the working of Oracle Forms internals and advanced features

I laughed, I cried, I walked away a solid PowerBuilder Developer.

The book was soooo well written, it made it easy to learn PowerBuilder. I'd never even programmed before. Now I'm living la vida loca in San Diego, and I owe it all to the great, great man who wrote this book. You changed my life. If I could only repay you.

As mentioned above I thought the book was teriffic. Hats off to the author!

Instead of wasting your time having you build applications you'll never use, this book gets you into real Powerbuilder code. It takes time to explain some of the basics, but it is a well-written reference for intermediate to expert PB5 programmers. Excellent coverage of the new PB5 features and great help in migrating from 4.0! I recommend any PB developer to add this book to their library.

One of the best book I read on powerbuilder. it is a good learning book for the intermediate & expert PB5 programmer.

In a world where computer books often surpass the 1,000 page barrier Rex Hogan's "A Practical Guide to Database Design" is brief and to-the-point. The information Mr. Hogan presents is relevant due to the ubiquity of "relational" databases in Corporate America. He gives you the tools to formulate a good design saving many a project from certain disaster. Most people should be able to digest this book in one or two 3-hour sessions. Good reading.

Brett Robblee Freedom Communications

This is the first book I read about database design so I can't say this is the only one you need. But this short book is very well written and very easy to follow. Particularly good for people like me, a junior DBA whose database design experience is, say, below 1000 hours.

This book is one of my most-used referenced books. I've done a LOT of work using the BO XI SDK to build utility programs to help administer our system and I regularly use it to look up details.

Carl's explanations of the many of the intricacies of using the SDK and the query language are straight-forward and easy to understand. He includes many tips about undocumented and little-known features along with information about things to watch out for where the software may not behave like you would expect it to.

In addition to the SDK, there is a good overview of the admin tools that are supplied with the BusinessObjects Enterprise software and there is a full chapter on the security model.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to enhance the capabilities of their BusinessObjects system.

The company I work for started a Crystal Enterprise project several months ago. I can honestly say that we would have been unable to complete the project if we did not have this book. It really takes you step-by-step in an easily readable format through what needs to be done. Also, the examples used all worked properly (a problem with many other computer books) and were extremely relevant. There are few people with Crystal Entreprise experience out there today so this book is really needed. We also find ourselves using it as a reference guide occasionally. If you are working with Crystal Enterprise or planning to implement CE I would strongly recommend this book.

The ability to run .NET code within the database makes SQL Server even more valuable - and the need for Pro SQL Server 2005 Assemblies even more obvious. Here's a guide to building each type of SQL Server assembly, packed with examples geared to common business problems and solutions, and tips on accessing external data sources and web services. Code projects in C# and Visual Basic are available from the Apress web site, making this expert's guide even more useful.

Do not be mistaken the book is NOT a light read but the knowlege that the author is able to impart is fantastic.
I found the first part of the book really informative especially the parts dealing with User Defined Functions and the User Defined Data types.
One must try out the examples in order to glean the most from the book. The last chapter's examples involve the use of Web Services. This is a must!!
Over all I would really recommend the book to the SQL Server Developer.

I was amazed to see how well this book explain the concept of Spatial Data and all different techniques of loading and transforming XML from diverse format and systems. It shows so many examples at a very granular level. This book is a "must read" for everyone that has any interest on learning great powerful XML techniques on SQL Server 2008. It is definitely great!

Rosa Lopez
MS Information Systems

The Pro SQL Server 2008 XML book dives right into the details of XML from the first page. This book was written by a developer for developers, and the author goes to great lengths to demonstrate all the concepts presented in the book. In my opinion, this book scores highly in many areas.

The author assumes a basic knowledge of SQL, but he thoroughly explains every step of SQL Server's XML functionality along the way. The book even compares and contrasts the SQL Server implementation of XML to the W3C and ISO standards, pointing out where the SQL Server implementation differs.

However, while the book assumes this basic understanding, any developer interested in getting the most out of SQL Server's XML functions will find the book both informative and enjoyable. The author goes to great lengths to explain XML and why it's relevant in the database. This is absolutely the best reference for SQL Server XML that I've seen.


The author provides what he calls "Cross-Platform Tips" at various points to call attention to limitations of the SQL Server implementation, or areas where it differs from the standards. These types of tips, generously portioned throughout the book, are designed to keep people from wasting hours trying to figure out why the XQuery code sample they copied from the Internet (or some other source) isn't working as advertised on SQL Server. While this book is written for SQL Server 2008, much of the functionality described works with (or is similar to) SQL Server 2005 functionality (as the author points out, some notable exceptions include the added support for Geography Markup Language "GML", and the FLWOR statement "let" clause). As the book explains, the difference between SQL Server 2005 XML functionality and SQL Server 2008 XML functionality is not nearly as large as the leap was from SQL 2000 to 2005. New SQL Server 2008 features aside, this book works equally well as a reference to SQL Server 2005 XML functionality!



Another thing I like about this book is that the author builds on the code samples from one chapter to the next. There is a particularly detailed example of a hierarchical "bill of materials" that the author continually adds newly introduced functionality to over the course of a few chapters. He uses this example to demonstrate how to layer XML functionality to build an intricate application from a very basic premise. I really like the fact that this book provides examples and addresses the problems that most books go out of their way to avoid. Where many books give you a simple top-down hierarchical organization chart that's been done 100 times by 100 different people, this book gives you recursive XML Schemas. Instead of just rehashing the well-advertised SQL Server limitation that Document Type Definitions can't be used to validate your XML this book gives you working examples of code to get around the issue. The book provides many more real world examples, with some pretty intriguing ideas as well (like grabbing an XML RSS feed or searching eBay directly from SQL Server). A nice bonus: Almost all examples are designed to run directly in the AdventureWorks 2008 sample database, and all are freely downloadable from the publisher's website.



And this book doesn't just stop at the server. The author provides analysis of client-side tools including LINQ to XML, SQLXML, HTTP SOAP Endpoints, and a wide supporting cast of XML support tools - many that are provided "out of the box" with SQL Server.


This is the ultimate reference for all things XML on SQL Server 2008.

Of course there are many books in the market, and this one is not the most updated since SQL 7.0 is right around the corner, but I still think this book is a great tool for SQL developers and admins. The author assumed readers have solid knowledge of T-SQL programming and goes straight to installation. Not too flashy but that leads to datatypes, devices, backups, replication, security, transactions, locks and others, NO FLASH, JUST PLAIN GOOD ADVICES AND EXPLANATION.

There are so many good hints and clues throughout the book, and all that should have be highlighted...but if publisher did that then the whole book would be highlighted.

I am just hoping that a SQL 7 is in the works by the team of SQL 6.5 admin

I was lucky to have Sharon Dooley in a Learning Tree class and she really knows her stuff. This book has some great articles on tuning SQL Server (good rules-of-thumb) as well as some good troubleshooting techniques. As a SQL Server DBA, this is a must have book

This is an intermediate level book. It is intended for the application developer who already has some knowledge of SQL (which implies some knowledge of what databases do) and of programming (particularly Java). For instance, the first chapter of this book is on the internal structure of Oracle. That's a long ways from the standard beginning of this is what a database does.

A thing this book is not for is the database administrator. There's very little on things like set-up, assigning users, security (there's a little on this); those kinds of administrative details. This book is, as I said at first, for developers.

The book does go heavily into programming techniques like triggers, regular expressions, object types, XML, defining your own functions -- things like that.

The authors all have extensive experience with Oracle, most of them work for or have worked for Oracle. As this series of books proclaims, this is a book written at the programmer to programmer level.

I have read all the books on Oracle and most seem pretty fluffy - lots of pages but the content is on a pretty basic level. This is the first book I have seen that really delves into the guts of Oracle - how it works, and how to program applications effectively for it. Just what I have been looking for!!!

This is the best book I have ever read on Foxpro.

This is one of the best "how to" books I have ever read because it solves more mysteries than it creates.

I feel this book does an outstanding job of explaining the hybred (sort of) object oriented concept of the FoxPro Read Clause (event).

Having formally studied Visual Basic, I came to Foxpro as a refugee from DBASE (pre-windows) and found myself struggling to figure out what the events were and when they happened. This book cleared it all up for me.

Foxpro itself is a bit clutsy and obscure but this book explains even those parts instead of just leaving one to wonder how it is that the packaged sample code does what it does.