To start off - the table of contents is very well laid out with a short overview of what each chapter is about and then follows with a table of contents for each chapter -great for when you're trying to find a information quickly.

I found that each chapter covered the material more than adequately - giving lots of instruction and examples on the topic, as well as an excellent use of visual graphics to get the point across. The author then challenges the reader to put what they've learned to the test.

Just about everyone in the development field knows how to do simple queries such as INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE and SELECT, but while this book covers the simple SQL statements, it also takes you beyond into sub queries, joins and transactions, keeping everyone from the novice to the hard nosed professional happy.

I have found in most SQL books, that most of the material covered talks to 10-20% of the application development world covering topics such as CREATE TABLE , ALTER TABLE and other commands that remain in the Database Administrator realm. As a developer, I have tools such as Visual Studio, Sql Server 2005 Enterprise manager and TOAD to work with to build tables, change structure, build relationships, etc., etc. I therefore found it refreshing to find a book that devotes most of it's material to covering (in my humble opinion) the really important stuff such as efficient ways to retreive, view and modify the data.

Great Job Lynn
Congratulations O'Reilly for another great addition to the "Head First" line