database design

David Kroenke's newest edition of his work, Database Processing: Fundamentals, Design, and Implementation (9th Edition), is an excellent book that serves well as an introductory text on Databases. What makes this text even more valuable is that it takes you beyond the basics as you work your way through it. The Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) uses this text for two different database courses. Here is an overview of the sections in the book (each section contains multiple chapters):

Part I - Entity-Relationship Data Modeling
Part II - Database Design
Part III - Structured Query Language (SQL)
Part IV - Part Four (multi-user databases, Oracle 9i, and SQL Server 2000)
Part V - Database Access Standards (ODBC, OLE DB, ADO, ASP, XML, ADO.NET, JDBC, Java Server Pages, MySQL)
Part VI - Object-Oriented Database Processing

As you can see, Kroenke covers the necessary foundations of multiple DBMS systems, and goes into good detail on different schema regarding E-R data modeling. Additionally, screenshots are abundant in this text from numerous applications and DBMSs (including Access), and Kroenke does a great job at giving examples and discussing topics in a reader-friendly manner.

Without question, this is the most obscenely overpriced and worthless book I've ever bought.

This book was used in the Data Modeling course I just finished and it was an excellent choice. Kroenke's book came bundled with oracle 9i, but I think that the ERwin data modeling tool should also be included in future editions. The use of the book along with Oracle and Computer Associates' ERwin made my study of Data Modeling very enjoyable.
In response to some of the negative reviews, it is my belief that the student should have a previous exposure to Relational Databases before attempting to read this book. Therefore, to use this book as an introductory course might be a bit much for the novice.