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    Read early technical reviews and table of contents for Gulutzan and Pelzer's SQL PERFORMANCE TUNING book
  • Sybase Book Reviews

    We'll review here those texts which are, or claim to be, about Sybase SQL. We try to be current, but we do not always go out and buy the latest edition of every book, especially if we disliked the last edition. We try to be fair, but disclaim responsibility for any errors or omissions.

    THE TOP 10 SYBASE BOOKS. We power searched the amazon.com database for Sybase etc., deliberately excluding any publication date more than 4 years ago. We have sorted this list in order by "what we think would be of most interest to the most people". If there is an amazon rating, of 1 to 5 stars, we have noted it. We have also noted the publication date, which is important -- many of the books in this list relate to version 11, which is not the latest. Others are so new that they're not available yet. All books relate to ASE, we found nothing recent for SQLAnywhere.

    • Practical SQL: The Sequel. Bowman. 5 stars. December 2000. The author once worked for Sybase, and helped write "The Practical SQL Handbook" which sold well and is discussed elsewhere. This book, which is one of the newer ones in our list (publication date December 2000), strives to include other DBMSs but ASE gets some emphasis. A plus is the CD-ROM, which includes a trial version of Sybase. It's a beginner's book, but if you must begin with Sybase, OK. Read InfoAdvisor's review.
    • Transact-SQL Programming. Kline et al. 2.5 stars. April 1999. Useful for both Sybase 11 and Microsoft SQL Server 6 (Transact-SQL is similar in both implementations). Kline has now written a newer book, "SQL In A Nutshell". Read a sample chapter. Read another sample chapter. Kline has also written several articles for SQL Server Pro magazine.
    • Sybase System Developer's Handbook. Worden. 1 star. October 1998. Includes CD-ROM. Not a terrible book, but many find its thickness is due to verbosity rather than comprehensiveness. Lacks coverage of essential developer topics, e.g. Transact-SQL. Better title would be just "Handbook". Worden is an Albertan who also wrote an earlier book, Developing Sybase Applications. Read Ball's review.
    • Building Sybase Web Sites. Hobuss. 3 stars. January 1998. Includes CD-ROM. Assume Sybase 11. This is an appropriate guide for content providers, but not programmers. It looks a lot like Hobuss's other books: "Building Access Web Sites" and "Building Oracle Web Sites". Read table of contents.
    • Official Sybase Internals: Designing and Troubleshooting For High Performance. Kirkwood. 4 stars. 1997. Goes as far as Sybase 11 with an appendix re 11.5. Kirkwood also wrote a book called "Sybase Architecture And Administration", and the now-obsolete "Designing and Troubleshooting for High Performance". Last year Kirkwood privately published a specialized but readable book: "Sybase Replication Server: An Administrator's Guide". Read publicity.
    • Administrator's Guide to Sybase ASE 12.5 (With CD-ROM)
      Penny Garbus, Gary Tyrrell, Jeffrey R. Garbus and Alvin T. Chang. Wordware Publishing, December 2001. 2.8 stars.
      Has a CD-ROM with an evaluation edition. An earlier book co-written by Garbus ( Sybase SQL Server 11 DBA Survival Guide ) got good reviews but is out of print now.
    • Sybase ASE 12.5 Performance and Tuning (With CD-ROM)
      Jeffrey Garbus (Editor), Eric Miner, Joel Duplessis, Alvin Chang and Yuval Malchi. Wordware Publishing, August 2002. 3.5 stars.
    • Sybase ASE 12.5 High Availability
      Jeff Garbus, Gary Tyrrell, Jeffrey R. Garbus and Raj Nathan. Wordware Publishing, March 2002. No rating.
    • The complete Sybase ASE Quick Reference Guide. Verschoor. no stars. Available February 2001. Not available from amazon.
    • Official Sybase Press Data Warehousing On The Net. Hammergren. no stars. January 1998. Includes CD-ROM. Hammergren has also written a more generic book, "Data Warehousing: Building the Corporate Knowledge", which we haven't seen. Read an article by the author.
    • Optimizing Transact-SQL: Advanced Programming Techniques. Rozenshtein et al. 2.5 stars. October 1997. The interesting part is the discussion of the odd-looking but legal expressions that one occasionally needs.
    • Sybase SQL Server 11 Unleashed. Rankins et al. 5 stars. 1996. This giant was the best of breed in 1996. Rankins has since co-written an "Unleashed" book on Microsoft SQL Server instead. Includes CD-ROM (which has nothing useful on it). Read Furber's review.
    • Sybase Performance Tuning
      Shaibal Roy and Marc Sugiyama. Prentice Hall, March 1996. 3 stars.
      The authors were Sybase employees. On the Sybase web site, this book is referred to as "an excellent reference". Sybase itself publishes a performance tuning guide, there's some overlap.


    SOME OLDER SYBASE BOOKS.

    The 1998 book by Jan Harrington -- SQL Clearly Explained -- is a generic ANSI intro but Sybase was used to test the examples. It includes some reasonable efficiency tips, but naturally does not cover SQL-99 additions. There are errors on these pages: 29,33,35, 57,83,140, 145, 153, 160, 171, 186, 233.

    There are a few pre-1996 books which we cannot recommend, but they were well written and still contain some useful information. They are: Physical Database Design For Sybase SQL; Sybase and Client/Server Computing; and McGoveran and Date's 1992 classic, Guide To Sybase And SQL Server.

    David Owen maintains a "Sybase FAQ" and part 19 of the FAQ includes short comments on several of the above books. You can download the Sybase FAQ from isug.com.

    Sybase's own documentation is downloadable from the Sybase support page.

    See also our related pages: Database Book Reviews, ADO Book Reviews, Java and SQL Book Reviews.




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