Rating: 

I saw the following statement in another review of this book:

Unlike most other books, this book is produced by Java experts

This is evident. As the database sample chapter did do a fair job of expressing goals of normalization and provided useful examples and commentary, the entire section regarding table design and primary keys is flawed. There are a number of sidebars labeled "best practice" which do not promote any best practices I am aware of. It is not helpful to suggest to neophyte database developers that character PKs are desirable, that multi-part PKs are tolerated, and that including the name of a table in the primary key is done to make things easier when using CASE tools. There are some appropriate suggestions such as using integrity constraints and cautioning against one-to-one relationships.

I also feel that of all the CDs that could have been used in table 2-1, the author could have chosen more neutral examples to be used to illustrate business data and sample queries. I'm not a prude, but I cannot share titles like "Pornography" and "Garbage" and discuss them (as example data) with my students because it may offend someone and put them off the subject. As it is presented, this book seems unsuitable even as a supplemental text for training. It may be of value to those who have few expectations of the quality or integrity of their persistent storage designs.

Please bring back Dave Ensor and Ian Stevenson! These guys understood and explained "best practice" very well in their O'Reilly title "Oracle Design".