By far the worst O'Reilly book I have come across! The section on Database theory is thorough enough - but uses an entirely different terminology from the rest of the book. The section on MySQL goes into detail on how to use the mysqladmin program for looking at the size of tables and other things about the server, but at no point does it tell you how to submit SQL commands to MySQL - admittidly this is quite simple (use the mysql command) but it still should have been included. Neither does the book explain that you join tables when when you retrieve data from them but gives the impression that they need to be joined when you set up the data base. The tutorial on the MySQL home pages is far superior!

I could go on...

However it must be said that the book did provide a place to start learning about SQL, many thanks to O'Reilly for supporting these non-comercial alternatives to standard apps. Please can we have this book looked at and improved to the standard that we have come to expect from O'Reilly