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title = "Concise Guide To Databases - Peter Lake, Paul Crowther"
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date = 2021-02-10
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updated = 2021-02-12
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[taxonomies]
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tags = ["books", "reviews", "it", "books:2021", "published:2013", "peter lake",
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"paul crowther", "stars:1"]
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[GoodReads
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Summary](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18475615-concise-guide-to-databases):
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This easy-to-read textbook/reference presents a comprehensive introduction to
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databases, opening with a concise history of databases and of data as an
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organisational asset. As relational database management systems are no longer
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the only database solution, the book takes a wider view of database technology,
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encompassing big data, NoSQL, object and object-relational, and in-memory
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databases. The text also examines the issues of scalability, availability,
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performance and security encountered when building and running a database in the
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real world.
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<!-- more -->
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{{ stars(stars=1) }}
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Let me get something out of my system straight away: This book needs some
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**serious** proof-reading. The authors seem to have an aversion to commas, and
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that makes reading some sentences really hard ("Is that an adjective or a noun?
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Oh, heck, I though it was an adjective, and now things don't make sense; let me
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read that again as a noun to see if that works.") There are a lot of repeat
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content (three times there is a discussion on how HDD prices are falling, how
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the price per megabyte is falling and how SSD is faster than HD). All the
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abstracts, the first part of every chapter, are just some copy'n'paste from a
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few phrases of the first part after the abstract. And there are "is in the a
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Microsoft", "none encrypted protocol" and there is even a "[company] and there
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product". And two paragraphs one-next-to-the-other have "OS" written in 3
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different ways ("o/s", "O/S" and "OS"). Oh, and there is no definitive style for
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anything: Sometimes quotations would have a larger margin compared to the rest
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of the text and sometimes they won't; all commands (including SQL queries and
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related commands to be entered in databases) are all in the same font as the
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rest of the text (with one single exception in the end of the book); sometimes
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there are sub-sub-sections (like "14.4.1.1) and sometimes it just uses bold text
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with no numeration.
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But, if the book was actually nice (and easy) to read, besides all that, does is
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live to its title? No.
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Is it "Concise"? Well, not quite. The printed version is 300+ pages long, which
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I could hardly call "concise". A lot of content could be removed with no affect
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in the end, like the step-by-step explanation of all 5 levels of database
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normalization (which is also arguable if that makes sense in a book that should
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discuss databases), the explanation of XML (which is not arguable and feels
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completely lost in a book about databases) and discussions on what to do when a
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disk fails.
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Is it a "Guide"? Not quite. The book does explore (lightly) different databases,
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but fails to point **where** each makes sense: What kind of data/database
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structure makes sense in a relational database? What kind of data fits better on
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a NoSQL database? When it makes sense to use Hadoop?
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Is it about "Databases"? That's where the book fails hard, in my opinion. Sure,
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it talks about Oracle, and a bit about Mongo, and Oracle, and some about
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Cassandra, and Oracle, and they even mention Hadoop. And then Oracle. It feels
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like the whole book is just a huge propaganda on how to operate Oracle, how
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Oracle tools work, and so on. Sure they talk about other databases, but when
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every example is about Oracle, you have to wonder why.
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Another example of how the book leans towards Oracle: There is a single mention
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to PostgreSQL, saying that it "is popular with personal computer users". Heck,
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AWS RDS was launched 4 years prior to the publishing of this book and it already
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had the PostgreSQL layer. Since early 2000s, every time someone asked "What
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database should I use for my project?" there was at least one "PostgreSQL"
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answer. But, since PostgreSQL is in direct competition with Oracle, you can see
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why it is largely ignored.
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So, hard to read and doesn't fill the topic it proposes in its title. "7
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Databases in 7 Weeks" does a better job about being a Guide to Databases than
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this.
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---
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ISSN 1863-7310e-ISSN 2197-1781
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ISBN 978-1-4471-5600-0e-ISBN 978-1-4471-5601-7
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