Looking for a good book to help me brush up on my database skills

May 3, 2011 9:49 AM

I've been working with SQL and RDBMSes for a number of years, but my most recent job involved no DB work at all. Understandably, I'm a bit rusty. So I'd like to get a good book to help me brush up, and also to learn a bit more about RDBMS technology. What would you recommend?

My ideal book :

1) Would be useful as a reference, but also have some tutorial aspects, especially for advanced topics
2) Covers basic SQL, but also advanced topics like indexing, clustering, normalization, denormalization, and performance tuning
3) Possibly has some "problems" or study questions I could practice on

If there's no one book that fulfills these requirements, perhaps you could recommend a couple?

Thanks

posted by Sloop John B to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

topics like indexing, clustering, and performance tuning

...while there are good general treatments of these, actual implementation tends to be very specific to particular RDBMSes. (E.g., how MySQL uses an index is different tyhan how Oracle uses an index, and each has different types of indices.)

So for these, I'd first concentrate on reading the reference manual for your preferred RDBMS.

That'll also take care of your basic SQL questions.
posted by orthogonality at 9:55 AM on May 3, 2011

For database optimization advice, I've found Use the Index, Luke! to be invaluable. It's available as a free e-book.
posted by pmdboi at 10:31 AM on May 3, 2011 [1 favorite]

not a book, but you might like checking the reader questions at EXPLAIN EXTENDED and working through your own solutions... (note: the current most recent post is 2011-04-01)
posted by russm at 10:51 PM on May 3, 2011