C[omp]ute

From: andrew cooke <andrew@...>

Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2014 12:02:12 -0300

http://sql-performance-explained.com/

I wish I had read this book a long time ago.

I like SQL - I like having a declarative language available in systems - it's
much more than "a storage mechanism".  But I always worried about performace,
and I always worried that I was mis-understanding something about indices.

This awesome, slim book fixed that.  I *was* missing some details, but I also
had the basic idea right.  It's not black magic - it's a logical, consistent
system and this book explains it clearly.

If you're a moderately experienced programmer, with a basic understanding of
what a database is doing, but are unsure about some of the implementation
details, then this is the perfect book for you.  It's compact, clear, easy to
read, and helpful.

One caveat - well, not really a caveat, but a possible concern I should handle
in a review.  This seems like it may be self-published, and is written by
someone whose first language is not english.  Despite that, the quality of the
binding is good.  There are some mistakes in the text, but the web site has an
errata (and they're generally small details in the examples, not fundamental
errors).  And, finally, the writing is clear and understandable (you can tell,
in places, that it's not written by a native speaker, but they are very small
issues of style and don't affect the book at all).

In short, one of those happy few: a short, clear, useful, technical book.

Andrew