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51 of 55 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Fundamental, though not overly friendly
I used FUNDAMENTALS OF DATABASE SYSTEMS (Third Edition) in a graduate class I took on databases, and I've kept referring to the book since then. As a student, I'll admit that it was tough to get through this book at times. It's dense and almost impenetrable, but it packs a huge amount of information and is amazingly comprehensive.

It puts theory well ahead of...

Published on May 4, 2004 by Andrew McCaffrey

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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Useless for beginners
Do you remember the 80's "Twilight Zone" episode where a man slowly loses his mind as the people around him start combining words in meaningless sentences, rendering him unable to understand anything in his native language?

That's how I felt while reading this book.

This was the suggested textbook for a course I took on database management...
Published on February 24, 2008 by Dwight Suzuki

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3.0 out of 5 stars Not bad!, February 26, 2011
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This review is from: Fundamentals of Database Systems (6th Edition) (Alternative eText Formats) (Hardcover)
This semester, I took a course with three modules and one of them was "an introduction to Database" whose instructor required us to purchase this book... I read 7 chapters and I found it not suitable for a beginner in this field. Although there are many examples in the book to clarify the concepts, it is not still clear in parts. The instructor really believed in this book, but I don't!
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book, January 31, 2011
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This review is from: Fundamentals of Database Systems (6th Edition) (Alternative eText Formats) (Hardcover)
Great book, but I would have bought the digital copy from the publisher. They have an ipad/iphone app called smart course, but it only allows you to view the digital copy. Currently it won't allow offline viewing. They clam this will change in the future app update.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars More confusing than useful, December 13, 2010
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This textbook was required for my COP 4722, Survey of Database Systems class and I have to say this book provided no help to me in passing the course. The author wrote this text in a manner that makes the subject extremely dull, tedious and boring. Often, I would have to re-read a sentence 3 times just to get the jist of what he's trying to explain. The concepts are poorly explained and the examples are lousy. To be honest, after a month or so into the course, I gave up on the text completely and relied entirely on my notes, online/internet help and the professor's powerpoint/lectures. In my whole 4 years of attending an university, this was the only class that I earned a C in(which is the lowest grade I've ever gotten). I can't blame the textbook entirely because the professor was not exactly the best at teaching. Lets just say that after the drop date, less than 25% of the students remained.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars The right balance, July 19, 2010
It's always refreshing to see a book with such a nice balance of theory and practice: the topic of databases is so huge that even an introduction of this size merely scratches the surface. I had a previous 'on-the-run' experience of SQL querying before tackling this book, but I've always felt that something was deeply missing. Studying this book, and the classical literature it references, began to make everything crystal-clear! The text does not shy away from explaining core theoretical concepts, which was essential in understanding why every topic was the way it is. Thankfully, there were also a great number of examples following any newly presented formalization or theory, making the material very approachable.

The discussions were relatively self-contained, leading to an uninterrupted understanding flow: topics like topological sorting, total order, complete set of algebraic operations, soundness and completeness, axioms, BNF, btrees, and hashes were very briefly explained throughout the text as the need arose. On another topic, the 'selected bibliography' sections at the end of each chapter were simply superb, making this guide an _excellent_ secondary source to the field literature.

The book was generally rigorous, but it had a noticeable number of un-proven sprinkled statements in-between. Thinking about and proving such statements made the study very stimulating; in fact, the concepts sticked much better that way cause of the extra mental effort invested! Examples of stated, but un-proven, topics included: classical relational algebra's recursive queries infeasibility (Ch-6: Relational algebra), some presented techniques for optimizing I/O performance of the nested-loop join (Ch-15: query optimization), 'conflict serializability' of two-phase locking (Ch-18: Concurrency control), various properties of the two-phase locking variants (Ch-17: Transaction theory, and Ch-18), deadlock avoidance of various presented locking protocols (Ch-18), and so on. Depending on your time and focus, it may be an advantage or a disadvantage.

I reserve one star for _two_ important reasons: (1) the book is very pricy; no matter how good the book is, reading the field's original literature was essential for context and deeper understanding; with such a price, Pearson should've attached a CD-ROM covering the most important cited papers; in fact, something like SIGMOD Anthology two DVD-ROMs (covering most of DB research in the past 3 decades) is an essential complement to the text, especially for those of us with no access to complete libraries. (2) some chapters, particulalry chapter 12 and chapters 25-30, feels like being there to fill more paper; their different tone is noticeable and irritating.

Finally, it's important to note that this review is only based on a careful study of the _5th_ edition Parts 1 through 5 (IMHO, the book heart), covering mainly the relational model, SQL, conceptual modeling, DB deisgn, normalization, low-level data storage, query optimization, transaction processing, and concurrency control. The rest of the book (object databases and emerging research) was skimmed, so this review is not very representative of such parts. All in all, this book was a very worthwhile investment.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Great Reference, Bad Introduction, May 11, 2010
I had this book for my introduction to database systems class. This book is, as described by many other reviewers, a comprehensive book with a strong emphasis on theory. The terse writing style and encyclopedic range of topics makes this an excellent review of database information. However, for exactly the same reasons, this serves as a terrible introduction for beginners.

When learning something new the best tools one can have to work with are multiple different descriptions, diagrams, examples, and analogies. Diagrams could be more common, examples not particularly useful for explaining the concept, explanations make use of mathematical notation that is very unhelpful for beginners trying to understand the concept, and analogies are nearly nowhere to be found. Further, the complete lack of correct answers to review questions prevents anybody from using this book for self-study.

So, if you are looking for a comprehensive review of database systems, I recommend this book.
If you are a teacher looking at using this book for an introductory class, either plan on using it as a reference or please select another book.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars it could be so much more user friendly!, March 8, 2010
Parts of this book, especially chapter 10 and 11, are written in nearly pure mathematical formulas with very limited explanation. The worst part is that many of those problems are fairly simply if you understand it. The algorithms that are the main part of chapter 11 could be explained in a much easier way. Instead of trying to decipher them yourself, which may take hours, speak to someone that knows the subject and you will be surprised how easy all this really is.

I think the author decided that since this book is designed for Comp Science majors it must be written in an EXTREMELY concise way which made parts of it also extremely hard to understand. Too bad, because it really did not have to be that way.
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4.0 out of 5 stars Great Resource! :), January 21, 2010
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Brian M (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews
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This is an excellent and thorough analysis of database processes involving transactions, concurrency control, security and covers relational tables, object-relational databases as well as object oriented technology. There is a thorough overview of UML as well as ER design tools. It is a tough read and covers a lot of material and is very theoretical but practical. Relational algebra and calculus are covered thoroughly. This is recommended for an advanced database course as it's coverage of SQL is coarse and cursory. Instead this book is intended more for a behind the scenes analysis of database technology. An excellent database course as a prerequisite for using this book would use Mannino's Database Design, Application, Development and Administration. Mannino's book has an excellent coverage of SQL and its applications.
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4.0 out of 5 stars Good for School and database in general, September 27, 2009
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This is for someone who is very interested in database. maybe if you want to be a dba, system, or databasehouse analyst.

Little bit old but very good.
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0 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars There are some scratches on the cover, October 5, 2008
although I ordered a new book, There are some scratches on the cover, and it's looked like is not new
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars I feel dumber now..., March 14, 2008
This book is required for my database class; I wish it weren't. The sentence structure is absolutely atrocious. Whatever happened to publishers checking for complete sentences??? Because of the poor sentences, I loose focus and do other things (like write this review).

Surprisingly, this is not the most frustrating part of the book. Why do I need flip hundreds of pages backward to learn a topic or do a problem? The authors rely on you spending more time flipping the pages of their book than actually reading it (this may be intentional since the writing itself is poor).

If you don't have to get this book I wouldn't. Otherwise I feel sorry for you and wish you keep your sanity...
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