Rating: 
Summary: Informative content presented logically
Review: This book gives you guidelines on how to design a database. These guidelines do not assume that you know anything about databases, but do assume that you have lived through at least one major development project before. This is not a quick-start "how to" book, nor will it explain how to use relational database software; the guidelines are more along the lines of "Classify multivalued attributes as entities," and "Attach attributes to the entities they most directly describe." The exercises were useful and informative, and the author presents the material in a concise and clear way, free of typographical silliness or excessive personal familiarity, neither of which would contribute in any way to the material. The style is, roughly, 10% textbook, 90% cookbook.
Rating: 
Summary: Author must have minored in English.
Review: This book takes the technology of 'readability' to new lows. The author clearly takes much pride in his extensive knowledge of the English language. I'm not saying you won't get useful information from this book, it's just such a painful process. We all had classes we enjoyed and those that put us to sleep. This is the class you had to bring coffee to. It's also an invaluable resource if you want to learn countless stringent guidelines for drawing an ER diagram.
Rating: 
Summary: Best Relational Database book available!
Review: This is a great book on building databases the correct way. I highly recommend this book and if you cannot understand it you shouldn't be building a database anyway. It covers everything you need to know from normalization to ERD's (Entity Relationship Diagrams). I use it all the time to brush up on techniques that become rusty after not using them for a while!
Rating:
Summary: Perfect Balance of Theory and Practice!
Review: This is one of the best books I have found for the intermediate-advanced DB designers out there. Most of the other books dwell too much on theory - one of my main gauges for checking out DB Modeling books has been a scan for descriptions on what First and more advanced Normal Forms mean and this book does a great job. It goes step-by-step with plenty of worthwhile examples on why you should attempt to normalize to higher degrees and even on why, as a final step, you may actually want to denormalize (yes, undo some of the work that you've done). This is not a beginner's book - go get SQL for Dummies or the like if you're just getting started. If, on the other hand, you've been creating tables, databases, and indexes for a while and can't quite figure out how to get around a pesky design problem, then this is the perfect book for you.
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