Beginner Database Design & SQL Programming Using Microsoft SQL Server 2014

This book is not at all meant for beginners to the SQL ecosystem. If the book were not positioned as a beginner book, I would be more forgiving in my review. The book might be better positioned as valuable reading for someone switching from another database platform (like myself coming from MySQL) to Microsoft SQL.The author, who is clearly very experienced, is unable to relate to how a novice in this area might read this book. As an example, here is an excerpt from the introduction, " [...] RDBMS forces them to think in terms of sets without loops." At no point does the author define what the RDBMS acronym stands for. Later, the author talks about lightweight SQL vs T-SQL. Is a novice supposed to know the difference? There isn't even a one sentence description about how Microsoft added extensions to plain vanilla SQL in the introductory chapters. The book is full of much more egregious 'pacing' issues. For example, by page 10 of this book, the reader is already being shown queries using INNER JOIN, GROUP BY, and ORDER BY. For a novice reader, he/she can only imagine what remains in the other 600 pages of this 'beginner' text.The very first chapter of the book starts with a 20 line query that I can guarantee is completely incomprehensible to a novice. The subsequent pages show a table schema with something like 9 different tables all related via primary and foreign keys. What in the world is a novice supposed to gain with these diagrams? There is only a sentence each about what a primary key and foreign key are and *no* explanation as to why they are important. Honestly, this was upsetting to see.Beyond my (fairly serious) issues with the pacing of this beginners book, there are many typos and the author would be served well by using a proof reader for subsequent editions of this text.I simply can't recommend this book for the book's intended audience.

Complicated - not a beginners book

Good Database resource. Hugh G.