The “SQL Practice Problems: 57 beginning, intermediate, and advanced challenges for you to solve using a “learn-by-doing” approach” is a very good book for developers that are new to SQL and want to practice with real-world problems. Sylvia Moestl Vasilik is the author of this book. This book is good both for people who don’t know anything in SQL and to those who have intermediate to advanced knowledge of SQL. The results of the queries in that book show how in depth the author’s research had been. The simplicity of the presentation of the different query topics shows how well the author master her craft. Critical thinking is used to formulate responses and assist the user in considering approaches to the questions. It is a fantastic book for those who want to get real hands-on experience with SQL. As the book suggests, you can only learn so much by viewing tutorials – actually grasping the concepts can only be done by doing problems. If you are just beginning to learn SQL read this book.

The “SQL in 10 Minutes, Sams Teach Yourself (4th Edition)” is a wonderful little book about SQL and database. It covers the topic quickly giving you a good overview of SQL. Ben Forta is the author of this book. This is an excellent book and you will have a solid grasp of SQL after going through it. The tips, notes and cautions are very valuable in the book. Ben Forta has written the perfect primer. His economical prose and logical organization are held tightly together by his obvious passion for Dr Edgar Codd’s groundbreaking inspiration for the relational database. Mr. Forta navigates effortlessly through the deeper constructs of SQL, illuminating such oddities as the Cartesian Product with the same ease that he describes time-saving techniques like JOINS and SUBQUERIES. And he backs it up with sample table scripts for hands-on practice, a mini-Bible of syntax, a simple and engaging description of data-types and a lexicon of SQL-Speak. Compare it to learning c,c++, Fortran and other languages for the first time where you learn to define variables, learn the functions, test cases, inputs, outputs, etc, etc. A little bit of practice helps ingrain the concepts and the understanding of the code.