SQL is a term familiar to most people working in computer science. It is the standard language for dealing with relational databases for inserting, searching, updating, and deleting database records.
By mastering SQL, you will reap more success and increase your chances for advancement. To accomplish that goal, you must cultivate, train and accumulate knowledge with SQL books.
It is not easy to find a suitable SQL book among the products on the market today. With this in mind, I did my research and found the best titles below. They cover the full range of desired knowledge tailored to your level.
1. SQL in 10 Minutes a Day
Specification
- Publishing company: Sams
- The writer’s name: Ben Forta
- Number of pages: 256 pages
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Reason To Buy
- Best overall
- Attractive text
- Useful for beginners
- Easy to follow
Review
The SQL in 10 Minutes a Day is a good book, designed with many different topics to help readers understand more easily. It provides a variety of color code examples, allowing you to understand the statement structure better.
As a beginner with SQL, I am delighted with the presentation and content of this book. It’s well-structured, easy to follow, and great for your future career ideas. I still like this product more than other professional books, even though it only meets some of my SQL needs.
Yet, it gives you a great background and introduction to SQL. It provides an overall programming language perspective to understand SQL’s operating principles in-depth.
Ben Forta, an experienced programmer, developed this book. He has built each lecture content authentically and easily accessible to beginners. I recommend you use this book for your SQL development.
2. SQL Practice Problems
Specification
- Publishing company: Independent publishing
- The writer’s name: Sylvia Moestl Vasilik
- Number of pages: 127 pages
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Reason To Buy
- Suitable for all levels
- Improve SQL skills
- interesting content
- Worth the money
- Quick update
Review
Whether you are a beginner or have a basic knowledge of SQL, you can choose to buy this book. SQL Practice Problems is a valuable book, covering topics with increasing difficulty for readers to follow and learn quickly. It also has excellent setup videos that let me visualize my learning.
For me, SQL Practice Problems are more important than anything else. After more than 1 month, I have mastered the knowledge of SQL and have achieved the first results in using this language for databases.
This book saves me money and time looking for more advanced ones. The correlation between the primary and advanced knowledge of the book allows me to access and understand it easily.
SQL Practice Problems focuses on common problems instead of rambling like other titles. That’s also what makes it even more special to me.
3. SQL Queries for Mere Mortals
Specification
- Publishing company: Addison-Wesley
- The writer’s name: John Viescas
- Number of pages: 960 pages
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Reason To Buy
- Easy to follow
- Best compilation
- Impressive content
- Written by an experienced author
- The book is full of theories about SQL
Review
To successfully pursue SQL, you need to grasp the knowledge of this data query language firmly. For this aspect, I recommend the SQL Queries for Mere Mortals.
This book is practically oriented and provides practical, theoretical knowledge for you. It will teach you to understand the SQL language’s concepts and issues.
Every concept the book provided gave me a deep understanding and easy visualization of what to do for my future work.
The basic to advanced orientation in this book is quite interesting. It aroused my excitement and motivation to pursue this programming language.
The book includes many intuitive images and impressive hands-on diagrams, making tracking more convenient and quick.
For me, 960 pages are quite large and take a long time to learn. Therefore, busy people may not be able to complete it in a short time.
4. Learning SQL
Specification
- Publishing company: O’Reilly
- The writer’s name: Alan Beaulieu
- Number: 352 pages
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Reason To Buy
- Short content
- step-by-step guides
- Include all the basics
- Good value for money
Review
Learning SQL is the first book by Alan Beaulieu, with concise content focusing on today’s most prominent issues. That helps arouse in each reader an endless passion for learning, to access and understand knowledge easily.
Although I was very impatient for the reading below, its accessible knowledge ultimately convinced me.
Each chapter will cover a key SQL concept or technique, accompanied by vibrant and vibrant illustrations. Accordingly, it will help stimulate brain activity and create excitement and motivation for me to study.
To help readers better understand previous knowledge, the author has flexibly placed exercises at the end of each chapter, allowing you to practice reinforcing skills. From there, it will help you remember longer and more deeply.
In this book, you will have the opportunity to learn some other advanced features of SQL, such as retrieving data and creating database objects.
The book also includes accompanying databases, with a download required from the author’s leading site. However, the download is challenging; it often crashes. It even took up to 1 day to successfully download the above data.
5. Oracle PL/SQL Programming
Specification
- Publishing company: O’Reilly Media
- The writer’s names: Steven Flintstone and Bill Pribyl
- Number of pages: 1380 papers
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Reason To Buy
- Suitable for beginners
- Detailed content
- Many practical examples
- Accessible
Review
SQL is a language that is easier to reach for beginners with a specific orientation and learning base. But, with Oracle PL/SQL Programming, everything will become much more manageable. It is a great tool to start conquering and developing your career.
The book’s content will follow practical knowledge and skills for users to read and understand in detail. Even if you are not smart, it is possible to use it flexibly for future career purposes.
As a seasoned web developer, I’m nervous about getting started with SQL. Yet, with its support, I succeeded and gained much new knowledge about SQL.
This book is developed by two famous authors, Steven Flintstone and Bill Pribyl. They are experienced in the industry and help guide your future career development.
6. SQL Pocket Guide
Specification
- Publishing company: O’Reilly
- The writer’s name: Jonathan Gennick
- Number of pages: 208 papers
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Reason To Buy
- Great overview
- Amazing resource
- Deep content
- Helpful, quick reference
- Suitable for intermediate level
Review
Only some have enough time to dive deep into SQL knowledge through book chapters. So how to learn easier and faster? To solve this problem, SQL Pocket Guide is the best choice for you.
This version is available as a pocket guide, with information significantly omitted, retaining the critical focus in SQL.
Accordingly, it will help you look up and read documents more efficiently. This book is an effective solution for work-study balance. It helps provide quick information to serve the job.
In addition to the basics, this book will teach you how the system uses SQL functions, regular expression syntax, and type conversion functions. All the SQL statements in the book execute against a set of tables with data that you can quickly download.
7. Effective SQL
Specification
- Publishing company: Addison-Wesley
- The writer’s name: John Viescas, Douglas Steele, Ben Clothier
- Number of pages: 352 paper
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Reason To Buy
- The most profound content about SQL
- Good book for database design
- Include many practical examples
- Organize scientific content
Review
Using books containing superficial content about SQL will confuse you more about your orientation. Instead, it would help if you looked to buy products that provide expert, insightful perspectives, like Effective SQL. Only then can you grow up day by day.
This book offers practical solutions and insights into SQL. From there, it helps you solve various problems with SQL and design a database that simplifies data management in the future.
I have not used this book directly due to some limitations in knowledge and skills, so I asked my best friend to experience it himself.
After months of hard work, he is pretty satisfied with the knowledge provided by this book. Its content will be more in-depth and suitable for those with basic industry knowledge.
Yet, it’s less pretty than other books I’ve used. In most chapters, the pictures and tables are too few to visualize for the impatient.
8. SQL Antipatterns
Specification
- Publishing company: O’Reilly
- The writer’s name: Bill Karwin
- Number of pages: 300 papers
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Reason To Buy
- Attractive text
- Best for budget
- Best Advanced SQL books
- Diverse learning resources
- For the highly experienced
Review
With his expertise and experience, Bill Karwin has successfully assisted countless people in writing better SQL and creating powerful relational databases. The books he wrote have authentic content directed to many readers. SQL Antipatterns is a typical example.
This book has a total of four chapters. Meanwhile, each topic has a logical and easy-to-understand content arrangement. So, it helps you to identify, interpret and correct a unique and dangerous antipattern.
I thought this helpful book would be costly. It details how to avoid mistakes while coding. From there, it supports faster learning to improve.
9. SQL For Dummies
Specification
- Publishing company: Independent
- The writer’s name: Allen G. Taylor
- Number of pages: 512 papers
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Reason To Buy
- Fast shipping
- Worth the money
- Interesting content
- Good for building relational databases
- Provide multi-dimensional viewing angle
Review
SQL For Dummies is a great book to build to show programmers and web developers how to use SQL to build relational databases. Readers easily understand the issues presented in them through different topics with different and attractive content.
I have read this book many times and recommend it to both beginners and experienced. The knowledge it provides is different from many other titles.
The topics of this book are diverse, including how to use SQL to structure the DBMS, implement a database design, and retrieve information from the database. All are practical with today’s modern-day job requirements.
10. SQL Database Programming
Specification
- Publishing company: Questing Vole Press
- The writer’s name: Chris Fehily
- Number: 604 pages
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Reason To Buy
- Updated text
- In-depth tips
- Various materials
- Useful for many users
Review
This book is perfect for analysts, data scientists, and application developers in understanding and navigating SQL. The diverse lecture content, spread from start to finish, helps you get up and running SQL fluently.
In this book, you will also find general concepts and a clear explanation of the functionality of SQL. Accordingly, it will help you develop more comprehensively from knowledge to practical skills.
I am satisfied with the arrangement of the content in this book. The knowledge conveyed is light enough to make the reader bored and give up.
In particular, attaching real practical examples makes it even more valuable in users’ eyes. In short, it is a perfect book for your top investment.
Buying Guides
Before buying the right SQL book, you should consider factors such as qualifications, relevance, and authorship. Read the guides below for more details.
Level
Choose the right books based on your level. If you’re a beginner, buy books that explain fundamental concepts and skills. From there, it helps you visualize more easily the knowledge you learn.
In this case, if you already have basic SQL knowledge and want to develop more expertise, choose to buy in-depth-oriented books with many practical examples. Thus, access will be more convenient.
Refrain from using basic book templates because it is easy to get bored with the knowledge you have memorized.
Suitability
You need to be aware of the book’s suitability for you. Please follow the book’s content with your desires and qualifications to make the final decision.
Also, consider carefully the number of pages you choose. A too-thick book will probably frustrate you and soon give up quickly.
Author
Books written by famous authors will give perfect content quality and vice versa. Therefore, consider this factor in detail!
FAQs
What is SQL most useful for?
SQL is useful for interacting with relational databases. The databases will organize into tables, just like excel spreadsheets.
It works by understanding and analyzing data of all sizes, from small data sets to large stacks.
What is the best source for SQL practice?
Codecademy and SQLZoo are best practice sources for SQL programs. They provide the basic skills and knowledge you want.
What software is available for SQL?
Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio is the most popular SQL software on the market today.
What is a primary key in SQL?
Primary keys in SQL must contain unique values. The primary column cannot have a NULL value.
What are the 5 types of primary keys?
The 5 types of primary keys in SQL are primary, unique, candidate, foreign, and super.
Conclusion
The reviews on these SQL books above will help you understand how to select the right books for your level.
The essential thing should be the suitability to your requirements so that the new approach is straightforward.
After reading the most satisfied with two books: SQL in 10 Minutes a Day and Learning SQL.
They help guide my knowledge and best practices for my qualifications.
Finally, remember to leave feedback on my posts!
Thank you for reading!