It only took me a few pages of reading this book to realize that I was holding in my hands a potential energy source if the power grid shuts down on January 1, 2000. If the lights go out, this book is firewood. Without a doubt, "Teach Yourself SQL Server 7 in 24 Hours" is one of the most poorly written, badly edited technical books I've read in years. I've seen worse, of course, but that was the manual that came with my stereo. But seriously, the writing in this book is so bad, I believe anyone reading it might have a hard time focusing on the actual content.
The author, Matthew Shepker, often appears uncertain about his subject matter.
For instance, at one point, toward the end of an exceptionally jumbled gob of misinformation on page 35, Shepker writes, "It is bad database design to have more than one column containing a phone number at which your employee might be reached."
Sorry, Matthew. What you MEAN to say is that it is bad database design to have an employee's phone number appear in more than one place in a database. If it did, then every change to that number would have to be carried out once for each time it appeared. This is what normalizing is for, and lies at the heart of the reason relational databases exist. Having employees with more than one number is a problem easily solved, but having to limit the number of phone numbers you can list would actually be a problem in itself. Leaving contact information out of a database because it is "bad form" is worse than bad form.
I know this is a minor point, but this is a book aimed at beginners, and Shepker never bothers to explain his point. In fact, he never bothers to mention the concept of normalization -- at least not here.
At other times, I'm not even sure Shepker knows what he means. Consider the following example:
"Relational database management systems are applications of mathematical theories that solve how data can be effectively stored."
Or even better:
"A table, also known as a relation in database theory, is a representation of some amount of data that is important to the organization collecting the data."
Both of these statements may be true, but they are presented in the context of a text for beginners in such a way as to completely lack meaning.
And then there is the bad grammar. The book is full of it. I ran into so many grammatical errors in this text, I actually had to stop reading. Here are a few examples I managed to jot down:
"Global temporary tables are dropped as soon as the user who created it logs out of the system."
"Local temporary tables are dropped as soon as the user who created the table logs out of the system, and any other users who had been referencing it logs out."
"Many reasons for using views are as follows:"
"A great deal of advantages to using stored procedures are as follows:"
"You can do a great deal of things with stored procedures."
These are not mere typographical errors. They are exercises in poor writing.
Of course, the editing is worse; did anybody notice that the exact same information appears on pages 45 and 70? Please tell your editors and proof readers that there is more to thier job than running a spell checker.
A writer can lack style completely and still manage good grammer, especially with decent editing. But with this book, I'm wondering if either it wasn't edited at all, or if the writing was so horrendous that this is all your editors could cull from it.
My favorite error is, referring to IF...ELSE statements on p329, "If you do not include an ELSE statement, SQL Server will simply skip the code after the ELSE statement and continue on". Hmmm?, I thought the ELSE statement wasn't included?Of course I also liked the authors fine use of COPY/PASTE; the 1 page+ long list of Stored Procedure Options/Description which are duplicated exactly within the same chapter [on Stored Procedures] a few pages apart (p311 & p319). Once for creating a new SP, and again for modifying one. THE TEXT IS AN EXACT COPY. Geeze, what a waste of paper! Next time try "See figure 123".
But once I got beyond the poor logic, poor editing, poor proof reading, and typos, to the authors credit, I did find the book useful. It's certainly for beginners, and as such it reads at that level. Very easy. I also found the examples to be very useful. Something IMHO I find lacking in other "beginner" books.
Would I recommend it? Well, I'd have a hard time doing so considering all the blunders.
Would I recommend the Second Edition (if it ever came out)? Yes. I think it would be very helpful.
Tim <><