Rating: 
Summary: Novices beware: Poorly written book awaits!
Review: .
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WHO SHOULD READ THIS BOOK?
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My database course teacher recommended this book, saying it was
a good book for novices in the field of database development.
How disapointing this book was!
If you're already familiar with databases, this book will
probably be a goldmine for you. But for a "newbie", this brick
of a book will make you develop a deep detestation for anything
that has to do with databases.
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POORLY WRITTENFirstly, the authors expect you - the novice! - to have
fundamental knowledge about logic and more advanced math. If
you have ever acctually worked with databases professionally -
and all the pros say this - you know that this is unnecessary
knowledge. I have for instance never used relational algebra in
my work and newbies should be spared relational algebra as much
as possible or atleast be introduced to it in a gentle manner.
But "Fundamentals of Database Systems" tries it best to cramp
down a dry relational algebra down your throat. Water anyone? Secondly, this book is not concisely written. In a monoton way,
the authors give you lengthy and hard to understand
explainations of topics that acctually aren't that difficult to
comprehend - they are just made to seem that way. It makes me
angry every time I think of all the students who've thought
they were dumb simply because they didn't get this book! >:( Also, the constant references to other authors work was for me,
the novice, completly uninteresting. I don't need to know who
wrote what in 1960's, not at this stage. Nor do I wish go back
and forth all the time to see a constantly hauting figure or
table.
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SHOULD YOU BUY IT? Do yourself a favor - don't buy this book simply because your
snowed in, database expert teacher find it "nice" and "easy" to
understand. Have the guts and trust yourself to find a better
book. This book is a waste of your hard earned money. The only reason I gave it a two and not one, is that it's
comprehensive and has good chapters on datamining and data
warehousing. Databases are acctually really fun to work with,
honestly! :) Just don't let this book scare you away. Try find
a book that teaches knowledge that you'll acctually use and
that's well written (consice, not boring, exams friendly etc).
Good luck!
Rating:
Summary: For the mathematically inclined ONLY
Review: This was our textbook for intro to databases (3rd year class). I don't think I learned a thing from it... If you have a really great mathematical mind and you think in terms of sets and relations then it might be your thing. I now have a decent practical understanding of databases but every time I go back to this text as a reference it still makes no sense at all. </p> It is pretty complete... but it is highly unlikely you could actually learn anything from it.</p>
Rating: 
Summary: Undergraduate Nightmare
Review: Absolutely horrible for undergrad students. It assumes too much in terms of mathematical fluency, does not provide enough examples with logical steps to conclusion and provides no answer key to the exercises. How is one expected to learn if they are unable to verify their answer with a complete step-by-step solution to the exercises? Professors have a hard enough time trying to teach this course and the last thing students need is this text that only compounds the complexity of a database course. There's lots of areas in the book where it feels like your learning English by being taught by someone who only speaks French and you speak German! The authors assume too much and provide no answer key for their exercises which provide no metric base to measure your work - how do you know you did them correctly? it's useless! They are supposed to teach, not DUMP information on you at their level throught the entire text. In addition, the diagrams are flying everywhere - you'll find diagram n in chapter x. Annoying as hell! While this book is excellent in terms of theory and depth, it lacks in one critical area - it does NOT teach. It's a data dump with very few examples and for the more challenging examples, if provides no solution key. Even if the authors are THAT lazy not to provide a step-by-step solution, they can at least provide a solution key with just the final answer. It would be great if they could add pages at the end of the book instead of scattering the diagrams through each chapter in progressive format (E-R Model -> Tables -> Normalization, Indexing, etc....) That way, we can get a better picture of each process from modeling to finished product. The way this book is written sucks the passion out of databases. This book is written in a form of Professor to Professor rather than from Teacher to Student. In terms of college education, it's a higher LEARNING institution, not a better BANKING institution where only the clever, experienced and genetically endowed intellectual individuals will do well and benefit from the accumulated interest for the time invested in reading the material. The text must relate to all people at all levels raising everyone from the lowest common level of experience, knowledge and talent to a level, that at a minimum, should at least be a stone's throw to the authors' level. In terms of theory and technical depth of scope - it excels - in terms of learning from this book, it's flat out horrible. If your planning on developing DB software, this is a must read. If your not, you may want to check it out of a library and read the material that's relevant to you AFTER you've taken Cal 1 & 2 and have experience in databases.
Rating: 
Summary: A lot of knowledge, but sometimes to abstract
Review: As a student just started studying computer science, and knowing nothing about relational databases, I think that the author use to much mathematics to explain simple relations between tables and records and fields in a table. I would not recommend it to a total newcomer to relational databases. The author should have focused more on making the concepts easier to grasp for the students. In my opinion there are to much university school book theory, and to little focus on providing the reader with down-to-earth tools, to make it more suitable as a working tool in the real life. However after a more down-to-earth introduction with a book as, for instance, Database Design for Mere Mortals by Hernandez (doesn't include SQL though), I would certainly recommend it.
Rating: 
Summary: This is the most used engineering database textbook.
Review: Basically, Fundamentals is the text of choice for serious database design. The second edition has better and more useful examples than the first edition. Two of Navathe's grad students are at core development of Oracle Corp. Want what MIT, Stanford, and the SEC schools give ? This is it.
Rating: 
Summary: dont know nothin'
Review: dont know a nothin bout no books nohow. aint got no books none nohow.
Rating:
Summary: For newbee's a very fundamentaly sound book
Review: For the beginers a very good book. It gives a high level database architecture of relational database. Good examples to follow the book.
Rating:
Summary: The best book to start with
Review: I am a student in the school of Computer Science and Telecomunications in Athens University.This is the book we are using for three different courses.These are the introduction to Data Bases and File Organisation,Data Bases and Distributed DataBases.The book is very well writen and easy to understand.
But a small experiance in a programming language for the first part of the book is essential.After you read this book you would be able to probe further and start reading books about SQL,PL/SQL etc. rather than begining with them and not knowing the theory first.
Rating:
Summary: Badly explained topics
Review: I am very disappointed with this book because the content is generally very badly explained. I constantly had to refer to other 'clearer' sources online regarding nearly all areas of reading for much better explanations which incidentally were regularly about a tenth of the length of text and a hundred times clearer.
Rating:
Summary: Want the big picture?!
Review: I consider this text a superior cover on database systems.
So far,I didn't see a text as thorough as this one to cover the theory of databases. The book is full of SQL examples that links what you've learned with DBMS(s) and it also emphasizes the practical& impractical query algebraic e.g. division in query algebra and how would you accomplish it efficiently in SQL. However, the authors have devoted parts of their times to illustrate the implementation of queries for those interested in a deeper understanding.
You will find also interesting chapters about advanced database issues like data-mining, warehousing...etc. These topics need volumes to be covered thoroughly; however, they are covered in a way that make your life easier whenever you read postgraduate level texts on database systems.
As an undergrad. student I would say you don't have to consult any other text through the course. It is a full coverage, I guess!
As DB professional (Data Modeling,DBA,DB programmer or whatever you do for life !) I guess, unless you have problems with your wife or your roommate :),you will enjoy your time reading this text.
The bottom line is: I recommend this text for you or in other words, this is what you need.
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