Rating: 
Summary: Highly recommended!
Review: Making my living as a database systems consultant, I have read, studied and evaluated a number of SQL books for different purposes. "SQL Unleashed" stands out as an excellent book that nicely combines practical approach with understanding of the underlying concepts. This book has succeeded in balancing "how to do" with "why to do," enabling the reader to become a truly creative systems designer, rather than just a craftsman who diligently follows the instructions. The author has gone a great length in making the book practically useful, starting with "nuts and bolts" instructions how to install the software and illustrating the subject with plenty of examples, tips, real life experiences and "dos and don'ts".
Rating:
Summary: Highly recommended!
Review: Making my living as a database systems consultant, I have read, studied and evaluated a number of SQL books for different purposes. "SQL Unleashed" stands out as an excellent book that nicely combines practical approach with understanding of the underlying concepts. This book has succeeded in balancing "how to do" with "why to do," enabling the reader to become a truly creative systems designer, rather than just a craftsman who diligently follows the instructions. The author has gone a great length in making the book practically useful, starting with "nuts and bolts" instructions how to install the software and illustrating the subject with plenty of examples, tips, real life experiences and "dos and don'ts".
Rating: 
Summary: pretty sloppy
Review: Overall the book seems quickly slapped together with lots of things left out. Specifically, 2 major omissions: 1) clear text explaining exactly what each concept is and how it works. With most things the author tried to explain it felt like he was giving you the answer you would expect if you weren't really interested in thoroughly understanding the concept. ("The cockpit, what is it? It's the little room where the pilot sits, but that's not important right now!") 2) Many of the listings are missing from the CD. In particular , none of the Chapter 10 listings are present, which is unfortunate, because when I finally realized that the only way I was going to really understand what was going on was to actually run the example sql code, I was at Chapter 10! For a book which relies on the examples to communicate the concepts (since it does such a poor job of explaining things in words) this is really , really careless! The author even refers to the 'output' which isn't printed in the book (careless omission) and apparently can only be recreated by re-typing in the example listings, since the source code is nowhere to be found on the CD. This book might be useful as a reference for general SQL, and oracle and MS variants, but not much else.
Rating: 
Summary: SQL Unleashed is a valuble reference for your SQL library.
Review: SQL Unleashed has quickly become one of more well-worned reference titles in my library. As a beginner in SQL just a few months past, it quickly brought me up to speed on the essentials. Now with a little experience behind me, I find still a vast amount of yet untapped information waiting for me to discover. Thanks Hans for the time invested in this book.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent overall SQL book
Review: SQL Unleashed was exactly what I needed--a book to round out my knowledge of SQL. I have a pretty good practical working knowledge of SQL, but lots of holes. This book filled in the gaps and gave me lots of practical help instead of pure theory.
Rating: 
Summary: USELESS
Review: This book should be entitled Oracle SQL Unleashed. It seems specifically geared toward Oracle, and it appears that Oracle has many extensions not found in Microsoft or Syabse (which use Transact-SQL). Therefore, you should purchase this book only if you use Oracle. Despite it being useless, I tried skimming through it, just in case something would actually work with MS or Sybase. I found the book poorly organized and poorly written. It was confusing, and I have never seen such poorly structured code samples.
Rating:
Summary: USELESS
Review: This book should be entitled Oracle SQL Unleashed. It seems specifically geared toward Oracle, and it appears that Oracle has many extensions not found in Microsoft or Syabse (which use Transact-SQL). Therefore, you should purchase this book only if you use Oracle. Despite it being useless, I tried skimming through it, just in case something would actually work with MS or Sybase. I found the book poorly organized and poorly written. It was confusing, and I have never seen such poorly structured code samples.
Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your time and money
Review: This book was more of a knowlage book on how SQl integrates with nt. It lacks examples and true to life situations. Other than another paper weight for my desk it's useless.
Rating:
Summary: Skip on this book
Review: This Intermediate - Advanced SQL book is one of the best I've seen. It covers ALL of the Advanced topics of SQL with different SQL implementations and also includes the SQL standards. This book also has a very nice Introduction to SQL section that will be useful to beginners.
Rating:
Summary: Finally an Intermediate & Advanced SQL Book!
Review: This Intermediate - Advanced SQL book is one of the best I've seen. It covers ALL of the Advanced topics of SQL with different SQL implementations and also includes the SQL standards. This book also has a very nice Introduction to SQL section that will be useful to beginners.
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