i thought the book was a decent introduction. i had very little prior SQL experience but still found this book a little shallow. one major problem i had was that this books claims MySQL is a relational database engine, but describes no methodology for defining these relationships. after some discussion with others i found that MySQL does not even implement the concepts of linking tables or referential integrity, these are needed for the sample db created in the beginning of the book. it is stated that he will "get to them later" but never does, because they don't exist...?