Recommended Reading List (was Re: [GENERAL] Is my MySQL Gaining ?)

Bruno Wolff III wrote:
> I think you would be better off providing references to learn about RDBMS'
> in general for people that don't have that background and pointing out
> some of the Postgres quirks that are likely to trip up people.

To get the ball rolling, does anyone have these books?  If so, would you
be able to write a short review (respond to the list) about it?  Do you
have a review about some other book that you'd like to add to the list?

If I can find them at the local library, I'll start working through the
most favoured books to write a "PostgreSQL Study Guide" for the "better"
books.

The list (in order of discovery):

1) Michael J. Hernandez & John L. Viescas, "SQL Queries for Mere
Mortals: A Hands-On Guide to Data Manipulation in SQL", August 2000,
ISBN: 0201433362

2) Ben Forta, "Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes", May 2001, ISBN:
0672321289

3) Allen G. Taylor, "SQL For Dummies", July 2003, ISBN: 0764540750
(though I list this book with reservation, since IDG have been actively
prosecuting people who publish any kind of "... for dummies" guide, even
when the non-IDG version was around long before the "... For Dummies"
books, but that's another story for another time)

4) Kevin E. Kline, Daniel L. Kline et al, "SQL in a Nutshell", January
2001, ISBN: 1565927443

5) James R. Groff & Paul N. Weinberg, "SQL: The Complete Reference",
August 2002, ISBN: 0072225599

6) John J. Patrick, John Patrick, "SQL Fundamentals", May 2002, ISBN:
0130669474

7) Christian Darie, et al, "Programmer's Guide to SQL", September 2003,
ISBN: 1590592182

8) Robert Sheldon, "SQL: A Beginner's Guide, 2nd Edition", May 2003,
ISBN: 0072228857

9) Alex Kiregel & Boris M. Trukhnov, "SQL Bible", April 2003, ISBN:
0764525840

10) Alexander Sasha Pachev, "MySQL Enterprise Solutions", March 2003,
ISBN: 0471269220
(is anyone else scared by that title?)

11) Peter Gulutzan & Trudy Pelzer, "SQL Performance Tuning", September
2002, ISBN: 0201791692

12) Kevin Thompson, et al, "Learn SQL in a Weekend", May 2002, ISBN:
1931841624

13) Allen G. Taylor, "SQL Weekend Crash Course", January 2002, ISBN:
0764549014
(I'm a little worried about the prevalence of ".. in a weekend" style
books - what quality of database are people building after learning the
language in a weekend?)


Note that during my quick search for books about "SQL", about half of
the returns were books about Microsoft SQL Server. I guess MS-SQL
administrators have lots of reading time :)

That list will most likely take me 12 months or more to read through
myself. Anyone care to guess what version of PostgreSQL will be
"current" in December 2004?

Regards
Alex Satrapa