Description
This book is designed for graduate computer science students and advanced undergraduates. It introduces relational database systems, focusing on skills essential for professional application developers. It provides a foundation for further study in data science and artificial intelligence, as relational database theory is essential to these fields.
The approach is grounded in the author’s 40 years of experience teaching databases, working for a database vendor and working for an enterprise application developer. The goal is to offer enough theory to grasp the concepts without unnecessary mathematical details or lengthy proofs that aren’t useful in a professional setting. A novel method of teaching normalization, based on plain English-language rules rather than complex theory, is used.
The book helps students become proficient in essential skills, including SQL, data modeling, normalization, and performance analysis.
The text uses Oracle as an example of a relational database system since it is the most commonly used and offers free access to everyone.