Rating: 
Summary: Not worth the paper it's printed on
Review: The only thing that rambles more than this awful book are some of the "positive" reviews that appear here. WORST book I've ever read. Save your money and buy something else.
Rating: 
Summary: Read the title completely!
Review: There is a problem in the IT learning experience that surrounds textbooks. The problem is that their is not a logical learning path to follow to obtain the prerequisite knowledge to progress in the field. Data structures and Discrete Math are two prime examples of this. Its not like traditional math where you take Alg1 then Alg2 College Alg...etc....Its more like boom here it is with Discrete. Anyhow, I have been over many textbooks in IT and this is the problem. IT authors are either way too indepth and write textbooks that are practically impossible to understand or...??? Well in lots of cases there is no alternative. Database texts are no exception. I studied Conelly/Begg's "Database Systems" and found that to be an exceptional book for Intermediate level study, however it lacked any systematic learning approach. Its more encyclopedic and detailed than what is needed in a first course. Thats the problem with learning from IT texts. We are forced to learn from texts that are written from a high level non-structured format in entry level courses where structured learning is most critical. So how do we learn and progress when this is the case...answer: you dont...its a weed out. LOL? Anyhow, look at the title, it says FUNDAMENTALS! Then look up the word in the dictionary if you dont know what this means as it seems that some people in the IT teaching/learning world dont understand this word! Kroenke writes this book as an entry level, basic, introductory and FUNDAMENTAL course in database processing. After understanding these basics then you can move on to Intermediate and more Advanced Database courses. Thats what the IT teaching and learning experience is lacking. A Progressive structured learning format with texts written with appropriate titles which is seldom the case! Kroenke does this however as the title suggests. The text is progressive and structured and teaches the FUNDAMENTALS! Hopefully the textbook teaching world will evolve from the dark ages and professors will start writing texts in a progress oriented format in order to make the learning process more efficient and effective. Hmm..maybe thats why we are losing out to other countries, they teach this stuff more effectively? In brief conclusion, although this text isnt perfect, Kroenke provides what many of us are really looking for; to learn the basics of database technology. Thanks Mr. Kroenke!
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant and good for experienced users
Review: This book is both brilliant and good for experienced users. I find some of the "Negative" review ungrounded and biased.
Rating:
Summary: Grossly overpriced and useless
Review: This book is grossly overpriced and not useful, at all, to anyone trying to learn about databases. I find some of the "positive" reviews to be unfounded and grossly biased (they must be friends of Kronke or bad instructors trying to justify their use of this BAD textbook). I would suggest that both Kroenke and his buddies look for a dumbies book on "how to write a textbook." Note how the publishers comments about this book refer to it as discussing "fundamentals" and providing a "foundation" on databases. This book fails completely at doing either of those things.
Rating:
Summary: Grossly overpriced and useless
Review: This book is grossly overpriced and not useful, at all, to anyone trying to learn about databases. I find some of the "positive" reviews to be unfounded and grossly biased (they must be friends of Kronke or bad instructors trying to justify their use of this BAD textbook). I would suggest that both Kroenke and his buddies look for a dumbies book on "how to write a textbook." Note how the publishers comments about this book refer to it as discussing "fundamentals" and providing a "foundation" on databases. This book fails completely at doing either of those things.
Rating:
Summary: give a broader perspective as regards the database technolog
Review: This book is neither an idiot or dummy type teach yourself booklet nor an empty academic exercise but rather a general approach that tries to give a broader perspective as regards the database technology.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book For Teaching Data Modeling
Review: This book was used in the Data Modeling course I just finished and it was an excellent choice. Kroenke's book came bundled with oracle 9i, but I think that the ERwin data modeling tool should also be included in future editions. The use of the book along with Oracle and Computer Associates' ERwin made my study of Data Modeling very enjoyable.
In response to some of the negative reviews, it is my belief that the student should have a previous exposure to Relational Databases before attempting to read this book. Therefore, to use this book as an introductory course might be a bit much for the novice.
Rating:
Summary: Avoid this rambling mess at all costs!
Review: This textbook is, without question, one of the WORST I've ever come across - and I've read many. Not only have I had a significant amount of education (I'm currently working on a second master's degree) but have also spent many years teaching others (including graduate level courses). Considering that this is the ninth edition, it's hard to understand why anyone would continue to use it as an "introductory" text. Even the headings found on Amazon reviews from the last edition clearly highlight just some of the numerous problems that remain in this obscenely overpriced book; these include statements such as:
• Miserable Book
• Avoid - do NOT use book as reference do NOT use in a class!
• Not for the faint of heart
• Author knows, the rest of us guess
• NOT a good book for beginners
There have been so many complaints in my own introductory database class, that our instructor is now actively seeking another text to use instead of this one.
So, what exactly is wrong with this book? Plenty! Examples:
1. Verbose to an extreme - rambling discussions regarding topics that are only remotely related to the topic being covered.
2. Examples are filled with mistakes or are just plain wrong. My copy is now filled with corrections and comments from my instructor to NOT use the examples provided.
3. Chapter "summaries" are, more often than not, two or more full pages of solid text - and these are just the "summaries." Neither the author nor the editors of this book seem cognizant of just what a summary is - ever heard of bullet points, guys?
4. One of the most basic, primary, characteristics of quality teaching is the ability to "teach a little and then apply it." Instead, Kroenke bombards the senses with an ENORMOUS number of concepts in every single chapter, there is simply so much, that it is not possible to assimilate everything that is covered. Kroenke even has the audacity to note, in the introduction of one chapter near the beginning of the book, that readers should read the chapter "several times" in order to understand the material! Sure, it is often important to re-read SOME things but not entire chapters! Regardless of how many times you do attempt to get through the material - much remains incomprehensible due to horribly imcomprehensible presentation of the material!
5. Diagrams and other graphic materials are spread all over each chapter, although usually on pages other than their explanation. Not only does this make things extremely difficult when trying to understand them but the very fact that one must read an extensive amount of text just to even begin understanding what the example provides, before trying to figure out the exact concept that the example is trying the demonstrate, defeats the entire purpose of graphic examples in the first place!
I've now resorted to buying other books in order to understand what we're covering in our class. That has, without question, been FAR more useful than wasting anymore time with this nightmare.
Rating:
Summary: To compare the David Kroenke book with four other textbooks
Review: To be more objective, I will try to compare the David Kroenke book with four other classic database textbooks (yes, I have all of them) to see what is different in David Kroenke's.Unlike Kroenke's, both Ramakrishnan and Silberschatz deal quite in depth with the relational algebra of database design while Garcia-Molina/ Ullman and Date more on the theoretical and deductive aspects of the subject. The good part of the Kroenke's is that he is patient in unraveling the database technology in a systematic way. Unlike the four others, Kroenke choose to instill database knowledge gracefully. Instead of bombarding the student with the database jargons all at once in the opening section, Kroenke offers (knowledge) and counsels (advice/ insight) along the way. He tries to start from a clear definition of what is a client/ transactional model, and then step by step, proceeds from the (client defined transactional model) E-R/ Semantic model to database relational model design, while giving a clear distinction as regards the different aspects of relational database design, like logical key, physical key, relational function, normalization and etc... Only until the middle of book did Kroenke try to put more details in the content for providing more knowlodge of the database design and database concepts per se, like the DDL and DML, physical space allocation and etc. In this way, student do have a chance to see important concepts at stages, and from different aspect of design process and techical options, few albeit from different perspective of the technology. And understand the underline advice of the text, "there are different options in database design", depending on what perspective and what uses you want your database to be.I think this is one of the merit of Kroenke's, comparing with the four others. For those student who found Kroenke textbook meandering, may be they are looking for a textbook that would divide all the material into clear sections with clear topic for each sections. Then they should try to go for more traditional textbook format like, example, Database Systems: A Practical Approach to Design, Implementation, and Management (3rd Edition) by Thomas M. Connolly, or Database Design for Mere Mortals: A Hands-On Guide to Relational Database Design, Second Edition by Michael J. Hernandez. In a sense, Kroenke's Database Processing is not so informative as both Ramakrishnan's and Silberschatz's. It also doesn't offer a thorough treatment of the relational theory from a theoretical and deductive approach like Garcia-Molina/ Ullman and Date¡¯s. But it does set out to offer student of database a chance to understand the technology at a certain height and to and to understand what does it mean by "Fundamentals", "Design" and "Implementation" in treatment of data, data processing, database design and management of DBMS. I think some of the reviewers are missing the point of why this book was written. This book's goal is not to teach you how to totally design and program a database from scratch. Its purpose is to instill readers with the various perspective of designing and interacting with databases. Despite the fact that he also puts a lot of new materials not to be found in other similar textbooks, like, *Latest Internet standards for database processing¡ªIncluding multi-tier architecture and XML Schema. Enables students to understand the characteristics of database publishing using Internet technology while at the same time learning the most up-to-date standards. *Full chapter coverage of ODBC, OLE DB, ADO, ASP, and other Microsoft technology for database publishing. Shows students how to publish databases using Microsoft technology. *Up-to-date coverage of Java, JDBC, and JSP for publishing databases using Java technology. *Coverage of database redesign¡ªNo other text treats this topic.
Equips students with the skills needed to handle real assignments on their first job. And as put by other reviewers, his writing (English technical merit-very concise-to the point- language) and technical (database) expertise is lucid and clear. In a way or another, Kroenke really does set out to counsel the student on the database technology. And for this reason I credit him a five stars for doing a good job!
Rating:
Summary: My Opinions
Review: Whoever wrote this deserve in hell! Base on the organization of my class:
Intro to database--Chapter 1 and 2 did an ok job on that. But 3/4 of the class didn't know what the hell it was about. The reason is that the book goes straight into "WHY USE A DATABASE?" SOB. Why would anyone go into "WHY" before defining what it is? If he(Kroenke) is not defining what a database is, how would anyone ever know what a database is? This shot dead couple people (some dropped the class). Entity Relationship--Man. I am not sure whether the book is intended to torture people or not. Most are IDEF1X models. But the instructor insisted that we need to learn EER. What the F*ck? I mean this is so screwed. The book only has couple examples on EER. I am not sure the author is trying to invent (maybe it is misleading) some stuffs or not. It is saying when people refer to ER it meant EER; ER is not referring to Peter Chen's ER model. Holy sh*t. What on earth is this guy thinking? Normalization--Jesus Christ! The definition of first, second, third, and fourth normal form is so passive. It has all these colorful(awful) tables spread around over the chapter to apply the norm form concepts. This is chopped liver. The organization is messed up. And the guy is trying to play with surrogate key--what it is, how to implement it, etc. Why would anyone not explain primary key, candidate key, and superkey before go into surrogate key? I ended up reading stuffs on the Internet and borrowing books from the library. If a textbook can't convey the knowledge we needed, why would we use it? The class only uses 20% of the material. And only 30% of this 20% is useful. So it turns out only 6% of the book applied to our class. Give me a break! The list below is unused:
-Introduction to Structured Query Language (SQL), The instructure actually used another text for this--A Guide to SQL, Philip J. Pratt.
-Using SQL in Application
-Database Redesign
-Managing Multi-User Database
-Managing Databases with Oracle 9i
-Managing Databases with SQL Server 2000
-ODBC, OLE DB, ADO, and ASP
-XML and ADO.NET
-JDBC, Java Server Pages, and MySQL
-Sharing Enterprise Data
-Object-Oriented Database Process Some of these stuffs do not belong to a database textbook! For example, programming stuffs like Java, ASP, .NET, etc. These belong to other classes. And it includes individual products like Microsoft Access, Oracle, MySQL, etc. These belong to IT training camps and not in a database concept course. There are more if you look carefully. This guy(Kroenke) is trying to compile an database encyclopedia. But he failed miserably. You give me 120 dollars while I hand over 6 dollars to you!
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