object databases

This book is a relatively easily read intro., but is nowhere near being the definitive work on OODB. This book is useful but only in conjunction with other works. For example you will do at least as well with Stonebraker's (old) OODB book; SQL99 refs. covering OO concepts; some vendor publications; the OO parts of some general db books (e.g., Silberschatz, et. al.); the ODMG 3.0 spec book, etc.
As other reviewers have said, it's not clear who this book is aimed at. Including a general (and mediocre) OO introduction is seemingly pointless. No reader moving beyond relational db's into OODB is likely to be unfamiliar with OO. Also the DB modelling intro. is lame. There are some mistakes (typos in code that clearly wouldn't work!), but the narrative is generally good. The examples are long winded (multiple chapters) to make points that could be summarized in a lot fewer pages.
I'd give this book only 1 or 2 stars, but I don't know of a single clearly better volume available yet.

Needing a database backend for one of my projects but not quite up to speed on the relational database model, I stopped by the campus library and found this book. I plowed through the first half of the book in an afternoon, and started writing code for PostgreSQL the next day.

This book is short, to the point, and fairly shallow. A great starting place if you want just enough background to understand a database product's documentation. This is definitely not an in-depth SQL reference, but many of those details vary between implementations anyway.

The book could be improved by replacing the chapter on CASE tools with more material on advanced SQL hacking.

Every now and then I find a review somewhere else in cyberspace that I wish was posted on Amazon.com. Here is one from the ACCU.org website.
"Reviewed by Silvia de Beer in Overload OL37 (May 2000)
This book has not taught me anything new. I can not think who the intended audience would be. In the preface the author claims you need to be thoroughly familiar with the relational database model and that you do not need a background in the OO paradigm.

Part one, a hundred pages of theory, explains the OO data model. UML is shortly mentioned, but throughout the rest of the book ER models are used. The quality of some of the models is doubtful, as inheritance seems overvalued. Normal associations, like delegation or other forms, are not mentioned as an alternative. I do not know why this book has OO Database design in the title, because hardly any specifics about this topic can be found in the book.

The equivalent of SQL for OO databases is ODL and OQL, but it is stated 'A discussion of OQL is beyond the scope of this book'. So what is in the scope of the book?

Part two, two hundred pages, consists of three case studies. It contains many pages on useless company descriptions. The OO database design is based on the relational model, copied from the book Relational Database Design by the same author. Some tables are slightly objectified, but this is all that is done. There is no design, just repetitive code listings, of which the book contains no less than hundred pages.

I cannot recommend this book, you better read a good OO introduction and find another source for OO databases."

I couldn't have said it better. My reccomendation is some other guide. You might want to look at "Introduction to Object-Oriented Databases" by Won Kim or better yet, just go learn to do Object Oriented Analysis and Design using UML from the "UML Distilled" book, then (and only then) create am Object Persistance Model from the UML design.

Devin.