It feels a bit odd to review a book that's almost 10 years old, but I wanted a quick introduction to SQL, and Lan Times Guide to SQL by James R. Groff and Paul N. Weinberg proved quite useful in that regard. Being a client application developer, I've done a good job of staying away from relational databases and their associated technologies to this point. I've always secretly wanted to learn more, though, and the increasing ease of interacting with databases (e.g., ADO.NET) finally made me cross the line and, at minimum, read a book.

I used SQLite to explore SQL as I read the book, and it worked out great. There's no complex database server to install with SQLite; rather, there's a simple command-line interface for creating/opening a database and executing arbitrary SQL commands against it. Furthermore, the source code is all in the public domain, so it can easily be used even with commercial products. There's even an ADO.NET interface – SQLite.NET, a SourceForge project that uses the BSD license.

The book is not about any particular SQL implementation, so it proved quite useful in getting the basics, and getting a feel for where the syntax might change among implementations. Most of the book was exactly what I was looking for – simple examples of the various commands that are possible with SQL. I'm certainly no SQL expert after reading this introductory book, but I feel like I have a good foundation, and I'm looking forward to incorporating a relational database in a future development project.