Holy Database Books Batman!

Last night I visited Amazon to get some database books that were on my list of books I wanted to read. I ended up getting 7 books for about $140. Anybody that buys tech books know that about $20 a book is a pretty good deal. Here are the titles I purchased:

  1. Practical Issues in Database Management: A Reference for the Thinking Practitioner
  2. Temporal Data and the Relational Model
  3. Joe Celko's Data and Databases : Concepts in Practice
  4. The Database Relational Model : A Retrospective Review and Analysis
  5. Handbook of Relational Database Design
  6. Database Modeling and Design
  7. An Introduction to Database Systems
What I like about these titles is that some of them are sure to be alot more theoretic and academic while some will be based more on real-world tested solutions and tricks of the trade. As someone that's been designing databases for about 6 years , I won't be reading to learn about normalization or anything simple. Rather, I'm interested in learning the stuff that separates OK database designs from great and highly effective database designs. I'm hoping to be able to get through all 7 of these within a few months, if time permits. I still want to read Joe Celko's Trees and Hierarchies book too but I didn't buy it because I have a friend that I think would loan it to me.

1 Comment

  • You can't go wrong with anything from Celko; that's for sure.



    I used to work with a guy (Ernie) who worked with Ted Codd way back in the day. There are a lot more theoretical rules of relational database design than could ever make it into a practical and working model. Of the 11?... currently considered gospel, only a scant few of them are in practical use.



    Talk about a moving target.



    I've been at this for 15 years and there is one and only one piece of advice (regarding good DB design) that I can pass along - use NULL wisely, young man.



    And for god's sake - PLEASE use reasonable primary keys!! (ok, ok... that's TWO pieces of advice)

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