Joe Celko's SQL for Smarties

Joe Celkos SQL for Smarties: Advanced SQL Programming offers tips and techniques in advanced programming. This book is the fourth edition and it consists of 39 chapters, starting with a comparison between databases and file systems. It covers transactions and currency control, schema level objects, locating data and schema numbers, base tables, and auxiliary tables. Furthermore, procedural, semi-procedural, and declarative programming are explored in this book.

The book also presents the different normal forms in database normalization, including the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, elementary key, domain-key, and Boyce-Codd normal forms. It also offers practical hints for normalization and denormalization. The book discusses different data types, such as the numeric, temporal and character data types; the different predicates; and the simple and advanced SELECT statements. In addition, the book presents virtual tables, and it discusses data partitions in queries; grouping operations; simple aggregate functions; and descriptive statistics, matrices and graphs in SQL. The book concludes with a discussion about optimizing SQL. It will be of great value to SQL programmers. Expert advice from a noted SQL authority and award-winning columnist who has given ten years service to the ANSI SQL standards committee Teaches scores of advanced techniques that can be used with any product, in any SQL environment, whether it is an SQL 92 or SQL 2008 environment Offers tips for working around deficiencies and gives insight into real-world challenges