What makes this book different from others on database design? Many resources on design practice do little to explain the underlying theory, and books on design theory are aimed primarily at theoreticians. In this book, renowned expert Chris Date bridges the gap by introducing design theory in ways practitioners can understand--drawing on lessons learned over four decades of experience to demonstrate why proper database design is so critical in the first place.

Every chapter includes a set of exercises that show how to apply the theoretical ideas in practice, provide additional...

Views are virtual tables. That means they should be updatable, just as "real" or base tables are. In fact, view updatability isn t just desirable, it s crucial, for practical reasons as well as theoretical ones. But view updating has always been a controversial topic. Ever since the relational model first appeared, there has been widespread skepticism as to whether (in general) view updating is even possible.

In stark contrast to this conventional wisdom, this book shows how views, just like base tables, can always be updated (so long as the updates don t violate...

All of today s mainstream database products support the SQL language, and relational theory is what SQL is supposed to be based on. But are those products truly relational? Sadly, the answer is no. This book shows you what a real relational product would be like, and how and why it would be so much better than what s currently available.

With this unique book, you will:

• Learn how to see database systems as programming systems
• Get a careful, precise, and detailed definition of the relational model
• Explore a detailed analysis of SQL from a relational point...