The first thing to know about SQL and Relational Theory is that it’s largely a retread of Chris Date’s previous excellent book Database in Depth. The latter is a favourite of mine: extremely readable, yet with enough theoretical clout to change the way I looked at databases forever. The new volume carries over large chunks of the text from the older one, with some minor tweaks. As the name suggests, it brings in substantial additional material to link relational theory in with SQL, the only practical implementation of the model in current use.
In the preface, Date explains that the motivation for the new book was the realisation that practitioners weren’t able to figure out for themselves how to apply his theoretical ideas within SQL. Clearing up this difficulty is an admirable goal, and illustrates well that Date’s approach is practical and not meant as ivory-tower theory, but I can’t help but wonder if one of the reasons he didn’t state was that books sell better with ‘SQL’ in the title.
The additional material has resulted in a book that is roughly twice as long. This isn’t a problem in itself, though it does spoil one of the things I loved about “In Depth”: that it could be read in a couple of evening’s work by a sufficiently motivated person. The importance of making a book light enough that you can sit and read it on the sofa without looking like a database nerd should not be understated.
The prose remains clear and readable, and strikes a nice balance that makes it approachable to relative beginners while avoiding ever sounding patronising. Date’s style is precise to a fault, and some people will find it needlessly pedantic; nevertheless, there isn’t any pointless pedantry here, and if you stick with it you’ll learn why subtle distinctions need to be made.
So how useful are the new insertions on SQL? I find it difficult to tell. On the one hand, it makes it much easier to relate the ideas in this book to discussions of theory that actually occur in the real world, since SQL is the lingua franca. In the old book, it was certainly annoying to have all the examples written in Tutorial D, without a real specification of how the language works. On the other hand, Date’s examples in this book are still in a mythical beast called “Standard SQL”, of which no practical implementation exists. What is good practice in standard SQL might be impossible in your chosen implementation, or there might be a better way to achieve the same thing.
It’s certainly worth buying one of the two books here, but the choice of which is not as obvious. If you already own “In Depth”, the updated version probably isn’t worth buying. If you don’t, then “SQL and Relational Theory” is the thing to buy, unless you’re after a lighter and more portable read.
