I think I need a good book to help me wrap my head around how to
construct effective SQL queries - this hit-and-miss thing is not working
out well for me.

Would you please be so kind as to recommend a good book to get?

Thanks!

On Tue, 26 Oct 2010 05:44:15 -0500, MikeB wrote:
_SQL Clearly Explained_ by Harrington, Jan L.

It'll take you from knowing almost nothing to about mid-level SQL, in
a mostly system-independant way. Thus, the knowledge will be useful
whether you're using MySQL, DB2, Oracle, etc. It's not going to teach
you DBA kinds of things, and the edition I have is a little weak on
DB design nuances, but it's very, very good at the SQL part, data
manipulation, how join stuff together in ways that you want, including
the stuff that people tend to stumble over like opening tables multiple
times (a la "strawberry queries").

--
53. If the beautiful princess that I capture says "I'll never marry
you! Never, do you hear me, NEVER!!!", I will say "Oh well" and
kill her.
--Peter Anspach's list of things to do as an Evil Overlord

MikeB wrote:
I like "SQL for Smarties" by Joe Celko. It is not for beginners, though
-- one needs a good working knowledge of SQL to get through it.

Also, one book which helps to understand what SQL actually does is "An
Introduction to Database Systems" by C.J. Date. Actually, anything by
Date is going to be worth reading.