Why should we buy this book

[Anselm Paulinus]

What is unique about this particular book that would make one prefer it to some other sql books out there in the market?

[Thuwaragan Sundaramoorthy]

I haven't read HF-SQL, but my opinion after reading other HF series, this should be cool one, I appreciate the way they are writing and explaining the matter. It is totally different from other books.

[Lynn Beighley]

Hi Anselm,

1. I believe I go much, much deeper in explaining normalization, joins, and subqueries than other books beginning SQL books on the market.

2. The focus is on the learning, and I've made every effort to make complex concepts simpler to understand. The learning is easy, the topics remain complex. No dumbing down!

3. You just don't see a visual approach to SQL like you do in this book. Sure, there are some goofy thought bubbles just to keep you from falling asleep, but there are also diagrams that make the concepts much more clear.

This book isn't for everyone. If you take pride in your ability to learn from really dense technical books, you probably won't like this one. But if you fall asleep in the middle of the discussion of WHERE clauses in that 400 page text-only book, take a look at this one.

[Corey McGlone]

Originally posted by Lynn Beighley:

This book isn't for everyone. If you take pride in your ability to learn from really dense technical books, you probably won't like this one. But if you fall asleep in the middle of the discussion of WHERE clauses in that 400 page text-only book, take a look at this one.

I've read many of the Head First books and keep a good handful on my office shelves. I'm sure some people feel self-conscious about reading out of a book with lots of thought bubbles and other goofy bits hanging around. At first, I really felt like I was reading out of one of the "For Dummies" books.

However, the key is that the topics covered are the same topics you'd find in any other text - it's the format that's different. Like most folks, I don't have all day to sit and read technical manuals. In the past, I found it very common for me to read a page from one of my tech books and, when I got done, thought to myself, "What the heck did I just read?" And then I had to go back and read it again. With the Head First books, you're given a lot of illustrations and conversational text that makes it easier to take in and easier to remain interested. I've found that I can read the Head First books for longer periods of time and retain more information than when reading "classic" tech books. Personally, I love the series.

[Jim Sandman]

I've heard many positive comments about the Head First series, and am excited that someone has written one on SQL. I plan to pick up a couple of the HF books on Java and Design Patterns, and Lynn's SQL book will be an important addition !

[Andreas Svenkson]

I'm currently looking for a beginners book that concerns Java and SQL, I was wondering if this book actually uses Java code in conjunction with SQL? Or is it perhaps purely SQL oriented?

// Andreas