Database in depth, by C.J. Date

  • From: Mladen Gogala <mgogala@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "Oracle-L (E-mail)" <Oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2005 14:00:03 -0400

I owe this post to Mr. Lex de Haan with whom I was bantering when he 
recommended the book.
The book should be entitled "An Introduction to Relational Theory for an 
obnoxious know-it-all Oracle DBA".
Book is written in a very clear and easy to understand fashion. It gives 
a general overview of the theory
and states the principles, rules and goals. That is all very nice. My 
only objection to the book is that it
failed to establish connection to the strictly mathematical foundations 
of the theory. Relation is, strictly
speaking, a subset of Cartesian product - any subset is a relation. 
Mathematics knows many relation types:
symmetric,transitive,antisymmetric,  relation of ordering and alike. 
None of them are mentioned. Union and intersect
are set theory operations. None of the set theory was mentioned in its 
strict, formal form which I find unacceptable
when explaining a theory that is essentially a part of mathematical set 
theory. Axiom of choice, Zorn's lemma and
well-ordering theorem are not necessary to mention and explain in a book 
for a "database professional" but, in
my opinion, the author did shy away too much from using mathematics. 
Cary Millsap did not make such mistake.
I don't want to keep this esteemed audience under suspense any longer: 
yes, I am a mathematician, with college
in mathematics. The book is good, but it needs more math.

-- 
Mladen Gogala
Oracle DBA
Ext. 121


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