SQL In A Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference (In a Nutshell (O'Reilly)) Book

SQL in a Nutshell applies the classic O'Reilly Nutshell format to Structured Query Language (SQL), the elegant descriptive language that's used to create and manipulate stores of data. This book explains the purpose and proper syntax of hundreds of SQL statements as defined in four major SQL implementations, detailing each entry with explanatory text and illustrative examples. Perhaps best of all, authors Kevin and Daniel Kline feature MySQL in their coverage, giving it billing equal to that of Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, and PostgreSQL. Their inclusion of open-source MySQL, which carries no license fee in most situations, is recognition of its growing popularity and suitability for serious database applications. It also improves this book's appeal to Unix and Linux developers.The majority of this slender book comprises eminently useful syntax documentation (which is in the style of Unix man pages, with bracketed options and monospace arguments) and the other information that's specific to individual statements and functions. Additionally, it includes a relatively small amount of conceptual information, such as a section on the proper use of NULL values. The material that's not statement-specific also contrasts the four covered platforms' implementations of datatypes--readers learn that a PostgreSQL int2 value is known as a "smallint" in ANSI standard SQL, for example. This is a handy reference book, particularly if you use one of the emphasised SQL implementations. --David WallTopics covered: Structured Query Language (SQL) as it is implemented in Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL and PostgreSQL, as well as in ANSI standard SQL (SQL92 and SQL99). After an introduction to datatypes and relational database fundamentals (the latter is not emphasised), the authors document SQL statements and functions one by one, alphabetically. They take care to point out differences among the four implementations.Read More