6 of the Best Free SQL Books - Page 2

4. Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 24 Hours

Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 24 Hours presents the key features of SQL (Structured Query Language) in an easy to understand format with updated code examples, notes, diagrams, exercises, and quizzes. This book was written primarily for those with very little or no experience with relational database management systems using SQL.

This book is not a complete SQL reference and should not be relied on as a sole reference of SQL. However, this book combined with a complete SQL command reference could serve as a complete solution.

Chapters cover:

• SQL Concepts Overview
• Building Your Database
• Getting Effective Results from Queries
• Building Sophisticated Database Queries
• SQL Performance Tuning
• Using SQL to Manage Users and Security
• Summarized Data Structures
• Applying SQL Fundamentals in Today's World

5. SQL for Web Nerds

SQL for Web Nerds is a structured online book on SQL, based on the Oracle database. Queries, transactions, triggers, and RDBMS concepts are covered. Tap into the power of the relational database management system for concurrency control and transaction management.

• Data modeling - tell the relational database management system what elements of the data you will store, how large each element can be, what kind of information each element can contain, what elements may be left blank, which elements are constrained to a fixed range, and whether and how various tables are to be linked
• Simple queries: one table, one table with subquery, JOIN, JOIN with subquery, OUTER JOIN
• More complex queries: GROUP BY, aggregates, HAVING
• Transactions (inserts and updates) examining atomicity, consistency, and mutual exclusion
• Triggers - fragments of code that you tell Oracle to run before or after a table is modified
• Views - a way of building even greater abstraction
• Style
• Escaping to the procedural world: PL/SQL and Java executing inside the Oracle server
• Trees in Oracle SQL - shows the reader that a row in an SQL database can be thought of as an object, a pointer from one object to another can be represented by storing an integer key in a regular database column, demonstrates the Oracle tree extensions (CONNECT BY ... PRIOR), and how to work around the limitations of CONNECT BY with PL/SQL
• Handling dates in Oracle
• Limits in Oracle; how they will bite you and how to work around them
• Tuning - what to do when your query runs too slowly
• Data warehousing - what to do when your query doesn't answer your questions
• Foreign and legacy data, making foreign Web sites look like local SQL tables
• Normalization - a way of splitting up data until each table represents propositions about a single type of thing

6. Developing Time-Oriented Database Applications in SQL

Developing Time-Oriented Database Applications in SQL is an out-of-print book which showsprofessional SQL programmers how to effectively develop applications that involve time-oriented data and queries. It explains in detail how to record temporal data in tables using the SQL types, how to define appropriate integrity restraints, how to correctly update temporal tables using interactive and embedded SQL, and how to write a wide range of interactive and embedded SQL queries involving temporal tables

Sample queries include time-slice queries, different kinds of temporal joins, temporal coalescing, temporal aggregates, temporal unions, differences, and intersections.

This book assumes that the reader is comfortable with the SQL query language.

Chapters cover:

• Fundamental concepts - valid-time state tables, transaction-time state tables, and bitemporal tables
• Instants and intervals - also looks at predicates, constructors, implementation considerations and more
• Periods - literals, predicates, constructors, and implementation considerations
• Defining state tables - initial schema, adding history, temporal keys, handling now, uniqueness, referential integrity, and constraint attributes
• Querying state tables - extracting the current state, extracting prior states, sequenced queries, nonsequenced variants, and eliminating duplicates
• Modifying State Tables - current / sequenced / nonsequenced modifications, modifications that mention other tables, and temporal partitioning
• Retaining a Tracking Log - defining the tracking log, queries, modifications, permitting insertions, backlogs, using after-images consistently, and transaction semantics
• Transaction-Time State Tables - definition, maintenance, queries, temporal partitoning, and vacuuming
• Bitemporal Tables - definition, modifications, queries, integrity partioning, and vaccuming
• Temporal Database Design - properly sequencing the design, conceptual / logical / physical design, advanced design aspects, benefits, and application development
• Language Directions - SQL-92, SQL-92 limitations, SQL3, periods, defining valid-time state tables, querying and modifying state tables, retaining a tracking log, transaction-time state tables, bitemporal tables, capstone case, migration, and additional constructs of SQL3