Beginner Database Design & SQL Programming Using Microsoft SQL Server 2014

This book is not at all meant for beginners to the SQL ecosystem. If the book were not positioned as a beginner book, I would be more forgiving in my review. The book might be better positioned as valuable reading for someone switching from another database platform (like myself coming from MySQL) to Microsoft SQL. The author, who is clearly very experienced, is unable to relate to how a novice in this area might read this book. As an example, here is an excerpt from the introduction, " [...] RDBMS forces them to think in terms of sets without loops." At no point does the author define what the RDBMS acronym stands for. Later, the author talks about lightweight SQL vs T-SQL. Is a novice supposed to know the difference? There isn't even a one sentence description about how Microsoft added extensions to plain vanilla SQL in the introductory chapters. The book is full of much more egregious 'pacing' issues. For example, by page 10 of this book, the reader is already being shown queries using INNER JOIN, GROUP BY, and ORDER BY. For a novice reader, he/she can only imagine what remains in the other 600 pages of this 'beginner' text. The very first chapter of the book starts with a 20 line query that I can guarantee is completely incomprehensible to a novice. The subsequent pages show a table schema with something like 9 different tables all related via primary and foreign keys. What in the world is a novice supposed to gain with these diagrams? There is only a sentence each about what a primary key and foreign key are and *no* explanation as to why they are important. Honestly, this was upsetting to see. Beyond my (fairly serious) issues with the pacing of this beginners book, there are many typos and the author would be served well by using a proof reader for subsequent editions of this text. I simply can't recommend this book for the book's intended audience.

Complicated - not a beginners book

Good Database resource. Hugh G.

Book is awesome........... Covers wide range of topics with detailed explanations and illustrations. Screenshots for better understanding. Worth buying it.

useless, very chaotic, starting with useless, very advanced query to display names of tables in 5 rows (why?) before going to basic Select query. In the Kindle edition all examples copy with the book metadata (name title etc) so you have to clean it all the time in Management studio, it is 2014 according to the title, but uses 2012 sample database (despite the fact the 2014 is available), so you spend time re-referencing at every query It instructs how to add tables to Diagram, but not how to create diagram in the first place (not to mention all the hassle with requirment to change ownership if you want to create diagram on a dbase downloaded from MS) I regret spending money on this book, maybe if you are into some pub edition of Trivia on SQL 2014 you might enjoy it, but not as anything that would help a "BEGINNER" (and I am not by any means a beginner in databases) spend money on something better or just buy yourself a nice bottle of wine