SQL Book
 

I'm looking for a good book on SQL, anyone have any recommendations. I'm looking for something in depth, I don't want a lot of hand holding, just show me the commands and a piece of code they are used in and I'm happy.

Good refs are all DB-Specific. The O'Rielly MySQL reference is always at my side. If you know your shit I recommend the Pocket Book series O'Rielly does, pocket sized references of all the commands, syntax, operators etc.

That's kind of what I was thinking. I'm just starting to use SQL in one of my classes so I'm basically a beginner, but I catch on to programming languages pretty quickly, and get annoyed rather quickly with handholding in beginning programming books I've read.

Re: SQL Book
 

What context will you be using it in? Oracle, Sybase, MS Access, something else? I suggest getting a book that describes it in the context of the system within which you will be deploying it. I'd just go to the local bookstore and poke through the shelves till you found a couple that seem worthy then review and choose one.

The public library might have some stuff too. And its free.

Good advice from beestie but Public Library refs are usually hopelessly out of date. Nothing could be worse.

If O'Rielly produces a ref for your DB platform I reccomend it. They are references, not 'for dummies' books and often written or co-written by the authors of the programs in question. They tend to be accessiable without skimping on technical details. Fantastic references.

I still have my "Database Systems" book from college. Since it is DBMS independent, I can tell when I'm using DBMS specific syntax. This is often good to know.

I have "Database Design for Mere Mortals" which I like.

Hi, I'm a DBA
 

I work with databases a lot.

Any book by Joe Celko can help you out, as he is the man when it comes to SQL books. www.celko.com.

He also knows how to break down SQL for all the different platforms, not just for Oracle, SQL Server, Access, or mySQL.

Failing that, I recommend the O'Reilly books on SQL.

Mitch

Hey thanks, I'll look into that tomorrow. Found out I have a test in the class next thursday. I think I have a handle on it, but today my professor throws out two commands that are not in our book, and doesn't bother explaining exactly what they do. Can't remember them off the top of my head right now though??

One free, handy reference can be found online.... for basic stuff, www.sqlcourse.com, and for more in-depth stuff, there's www.sqlcourse2.com. There's also an SQL interpreter on the page, so you can try out the commands yourself pretty easily. It mostly covers cross-platform SQL, not so much DB-specific commands.

Why buy a $50 technical manual which rapidly becomes obsolete, when you have access to gobs of webpages full of constantly updated information? I know, I prefer pulp myself, despite the fact that it's an irrational preference when it comes to computer technical manuals, and I have to fight it constantly.

I'm a firm believer in the need for paper, especially when doing coding of any sort. I can't stand switching back and forth between applications to find information when I'm in the middle of writing something. Why I couldn't tell you.

Hmm maybe this is the excuse I've been looking for to invest in dual displays. Of course that requires having SQL on my home computer so that doesn't work.

For a while I had 3 17" 1280x1024 Samsung LCDs, god that was heaven. Keep your general apps on one (IM, email etc), documentation, information etc on another and you're main focus on the middle one, was fantastic. Of course I now virtually live in plane seats so I'm on a single 12" again.

Whenever I actually stay somewhere I'm going to invest in another setup like that. Maybe a main 20" and 2 17".

Yes, multiple displays kick many varieties of ass. I use dual monitors at work and at home, and I feel crippled if I have to use a computer that only has one display. This sort of thing is what I frequently end up using the second monitor for... displaying documentation. Even if you just pick up a cheap 15" or 17" somewhere as the secondary display, it's an improvement.

I too prefer a paper book, but I don't know why.... web-based is so much better... free, up-to-date, searchable, copy-and-pastable... of course eye strain is a factor when a lot of reading is involved.

These days can Win2k manage multiple video cards in the same box without trouble? I mean, can you leave that documentation on your secondary monitor while you go off and play something direct X on the primary monitor?

I've found that it depends on the game. At first I'd always have to disable the secondary display to play full-screen games, which was annoying. Starcraft was one such game, and I I didn't disable monitor 2, the mouse cursor would still wander into that space, and if I inadvertently clicked on the desktop, it would minimize the game. GTA3 had a similar problem.

But on most newer games, I can leave it on without any trouble.

Has anyone seen Apple's dual display monitor setup? Damndest thing I have ever seen. Holy crap - you can drag windows and things from one monitor to the other. And the main monitor is the nicest monitor I have ever seen.

I had tears in my eyes as my wife drug me out of the store.

PC multimonitor support allows this... you can drag freely between the monitors, but when you maximize a window, it only maximizes to the monitor the window was occupying. The mouse cursor moves from one display to the other when you drag it past the display's edge.

The main weakness with the setup is the fact that you have to select a "primary" monitor... all of your dialog boxes will appear on this monitor, and it is the only monitor which will support overlay, so you can't play DVDs and stuff on secondary monitors. I like to throw a DVD on my side display sometimes while I work at home, but that means I have to set the side monitor as the primary, so all of my dialogs and stuff appear over there. I think some video drivers force the dialogs to appear on the same monitor as the program which spawned them, but mine doesn't.

Apple does have some damn nice flatpanel displays, though.

Oops, I guess I hadn't looked hard enough. After I posted that I poked around in my advanced display settings, and found the option. So I guess my only beef is the overlay issue, which is only a minor nuicance.

Apple indeed does it very nicely, albeit with a couple of glaring bugs that wern't resolved last time I used it. The biggest is if you plug into one monitor that's farily high rez (say a 21" CRT @ 85Hz 1600x1200) then you go somewhere else and plug into a lower rez one, it doesn't compnsate and gives you a scrambled pic, I seem to remember I had hell resolving this. Apple's moniters themselves are now in dire need up an update though. There is talk of one soon.

I haven't used it since panther. My tri-monitor setup was OSX.

I find for learning, reading from a screen is hell but for reference material, data dictionaries, code snippets etc...invaluable. Anyone that works in finance has multimoniter setups as well, when you've got 200+ live reuters feeds you need it.