I have spent quite a bit of time working on databases that involve time issues. I've looked at much of the published material available, including Date's recent book, dozens of articles, conference proceedings, etc. Overall this is the best available.

After I absorbed a lot of this book, I felt there could have been a more concise version of the concepts. Maybe someone will come out with a concise, well illustrated 100 pp. tutorial that is dramatically better, but it hasn't happened yet. Even though there are a lot of code samples, there is still a BIG leap to get to a production system. It is too bad that something like SQL/Temporal won't be coming out as a standard anytime soon. However, with conventional SQL you can still go a long way in developing databases just by using the Bitemporal design principles.

Overall, if you work with time history, etc. in databases, you can't afford to not be studying this book.

I've used this book while working as the lead data architect on several large database projects, and it's been a lifesaver. It brings rigor and discipline to a very difficult area for SQL (true relational) databases: handling, reporting on, and storing the changing [versions of] data over time.

The concepts are themselves quite difficult and challenging, and I would be loathe to even attempt to build a system tracking changing data over time without this book's priceless assistance.

Another reviewer, an instructor, didn't like the book: it is not a tutorial and may be hard to use, understand, or follow if you are not already working on a problem that this book can help you solve.

But if you are involved in creating (say) an insurance application that must handle retroactivity, or a financial system that must be able to re-create an earlier financial report and explain why today's version of Q2 is different from yesterday's, then you NEED this book.

The one-of-a-kind book is a practical research on how the real world changes over time effect the viability of database design.
The author provides many solutions to real-life problems and (most important!) 'gotchas' of the these solutions. The examples are provided for many popular DBMSs(from MS Access to Oracle).
The reader benefits greatly from the superb organization of material, clear language and good illustrations.
The sidebar notes on history of time-measuring devices provide a nice break from the 'heavy-duty' stuff.
I bought my copy two month ago and it has already became a one of the best-thumbed books on my professional shelf.

Alas, it seems that every legendary writer must have his low point. After an amazing streak of masterpieces Morgan Llwellyn has proved she is only human after all with the muddled, confusing, and boring "Grania". I skimmed over the past previous and I must say I am surprised by the amount of credit and praise this book received. It truly deserves neither. It was pointless and trivial, Ms. Llwellyn never made me care whether Grania lived or die, and frankly after about 100 pages of her stupidity I almost wish she had. A waste of paper and time. Save yourself the trouble and read "Lion of Ireland" again.

Llywelyn has out done herself again! Grania made me want to move to Ireland and become a pirate merchant. If you don't like reading boaring books, read this one.

Morgan Llywelyn has outdone herself this time. A wonderful novel about a woman's struggles and triumphs in a man's world. A woman, not remarked for her beauty, but for her skills and wits, overcomes all that stands in her way. Grania is truly a treat for anyone who reads it.

Many Georgians and many tourists enjoy the recreation and relaxation of Jekyll Island, one of the jewels of Georgia's "Golden Isles." One of the attractions for visitors to the Island is staying at, or visiting, the restored hotel, The Jekyll Island Club, and touring the "cottages" built by the millionaires who originally developed the island more than one hundred years ago. In The Jekyl Island Club, Brent Monahan takes us back to the time when J. P. Morgan, Joseph Pulitzer, and other tycoons and robber barons vacationed in splendor, and ran their little island as part of their fiefdoms. When one of the guests on the island is found dead from a gunshot, however, they have to acknowledge the local authority, at least enough to have the Brunswick sheriff make official their idea of what happened. Enter John Le Brun, high sheriff of Brunswick and a person with good reason to hold a grudge against the captains of industry who occupy what was formerly his home. Le Brun has his own problems, including a brand new chief deputy who recently returned home is disgrace from Philadelphia and is the son of the local judge. The judge is not a fan of the sheriff's, and is totally in the pocket of the Jekyl Island Club membership. In launching his investigation Le Brun must face the disdain, if not enmity, of club members and some of their staff; concerns about the loyalty of his own deputy; his own feelings; and his sense of justice. The pressure is on, in part because President McKinley is soon to visit the Island, traveling over from Thomasville where he is vacationing at the vacation home of his advisor, Ohio Senator Hanna, to meet with the some of the millionaires and House Speaker Reed, a guest of Morgan's. President McKinley's visit actually happened, and Monahan uses that historical fact and the residual glamor of the Jekyl Island Club, to fashion a neat little mystery. In an afterword Monahan also notes that before and after the millionaires' ownership, Jekyll was spelled with two "l's." While it was their private preserve, there was only one. While this book is not a great mystery, it is a solid one. The greatest charm, however, is in its bringing to life the era of conspicuous opulence and filling out the pictures today's visitors to Jekyll Island have in their imaginations.

Pretty cool book - the ties between the characters and persons they portray are incredible... i found myself questioning, could this be real or is it just fiction...

It starts out a little slow (some very long chapters) but soon you are hooked. The fascination of moguls of that time and their impact on our history. Well written. You wish there were other books about Sheriff John Le Brun and his crime solving abilities.

I have read all but the first Brian McKenna Book by Dan Mahoney. This was the only disappointment. It was good enough to finish, but was slow going.

Most of Dan Mahoney's books are well written, and drag you in, even if it is not a subject you are particularly interested in, but this one missed the boat.

I give it three stars because I finished it.

Books by the author have never let me down. Mr. Mahoneys insight on the NYPD is second to none. He combines made-up characters with real people to form a great plot. This story piting McKenna Verses a Doctor/Killer is truly engaging. Not as much behind the scene stuff with McKenna and family. I kind of liked it that way. More of this good murder/mystery came about. Interesting characters, whose careers you can follow by reading the whole series. All in all a great act. I look forward to Edge of the City(the only one of the series I haven't read) and all new works by the author. Thanks to my friend that lent me my 1st Mahoney.

HYDE really hits the spot as police procedures are represented in its rarest form. Believable plot and characters is what makes this book work. Having spent time in the same neighborhood that the story takes plaace only added to my appreciation of this book. Mahoney in New York is what Connelly is in Los Angeles. These guys should team up one day.

This book trivializes the devistation that occured in Nelson County in 1969. The author has used a real county with real circumstances, and has failed to use correct names for areas and businesses, and also has made it seem like the real story that happened here wasn't worth covering. We are not "hicks" as everyone might believe, and I think that instead of fictionalizing this account, it would have been much better to tell the real story, the one that survivors have to live with everyday in their minds and in their hearts. I feel that this has added insult to injury by taking a community that had been torn apart by something that was beyond human control, and again victimizing it and it's citizens by trivializing the whole event.

I'm not done reading the book but it was recomended by a teacher of mine. I am a junior high student who attends a writing class as my elective at an art school. I find this book appealing to most audiences over 13, it has very good transitions. I have met Charlotte Morgan myself she is very delightful, she came to our class and gave us a lecture and answered our questions about the book. I also enjoy her in-depth desrciptions of her charactures.

One August Day by Charlotte Morgan

On the 20th of August 1969 more than 25 inches of rain fell in Nelson County,Vitginia. The area was devastated. Many lives were lost and much physical damage occurred.Besides the homes washed away, the known dead and the missing, there were eight bodies never identified. Who were they?? Why didn't someone come forward to claim them? Where were their families-loved ones?

Thirty years later these questions are still unanswered. Now Charlotte Morgan with her skillful use of words has rescued them from obscurity. Each has been given a past life with events leading them to being on the mountain in the midst of this torrential rain.She has captured the depth of their emotions as they face the inevitable. Their place in the memory of all readers of this warm-caring novel will be a lasting one as well as the upheaval caused by Hurricane Camille in Nelson County on that fateful day.The many physical and mental scars remaining have been brought to forefront by the author in her readable memorial of August 20,1969.

What I do not like about the book is that it focusses a little too much on the political history of the town rather than on the people who made up the population. A little time was spent on the initial Chinese American population, but more time could have been spent on those and other immigrant cultures that have historically made up the city.

Even so, it's still worth the effort. It is a fun read, and, though dated, it still kept me laughing unexpectedly over and over again.

I just loved this book. It was required to read for a History class. I couldn't put the book down. I read it in a weekend. I learned so much about Seattle, and the wild characters that help to create and establish Seattle. I never knew such people help to built Seattle.

Now I know The history behind the street names in seattle, and more about the history in Seattle that I would have never had know.

I'd love to read more books that this authors has written.

This is the consensus choice among local historians and writers for the best history of Seattle's founding, and it deserves to be. Morgan's portraits of pioneers like Doc Maynard and Arthur Denny are exhilirating and informative, and the book reads like a collection of excellent short stories rather than a dry recollection. If you are familiar with Seattle, this will change the way you look at Pioneer Square and the waterfront, but a knowledge of the city is not necessary to enjoy these stories of a city's establishment and maturation.

The author is a professor of management at USC, so his perspectives on leadership are limited to those qualities found in executives and in very large businesses that support the training of executives. The most helpful aspect of his book is that McCall urges large companies to develop systematic training for executive leaders, rather than leaving younger executives in a sink-or-swim situation. He also has a bias against ruthless, cut-throat competition and male testosterone-driven demonstrations of power and wealth that executives can get drawn into or promote.
Nevertheless, the book is limited: it says very little about leadership as a quality found in other people, other settings; implies that leadership is a unique quality of exceptional people that can be taught to those up-and-coming risers primarily; and supporting data is quite limited. He stumbles when he talks about leadership per se by using an example of a child violin prodigy, as if this child-becoming-virtuoso should be our model of leadership development.
It also is overwritten, the way stuff from Harvard Business School Press is overwritten: breathless, breathtaking, fawning over winners, etc.

This is a pretty good book for those new to the leadership literature. Its main point is that leaders are made, not born. I found it a little long for the point it was making, but thats probably because I've read other books in the area.

You will find a thoughtful, thorough process here for using a company's strategy to delineate what kind of leaders you will need, identify the leadership experiences that can create that type of leader, then to locate those who have the highest potential to develop those capabilities (those who learn rapidly and well), and to monitor progress. This is a very humane book that will help many avoid the painful career derailments that we read about all too often when a top performer suddenly crashes and burns in public.

By comparison, most companies are looking for executives with the right stuff for today, not the future. Then in a Darwinian process of survival of the fittest, those with the best track records win the leadership roles. Professor McCall points out a very serious flaw in this model, in that many people progress without developing any better leadership skills. With more and more success, leadership skill may actually drop as strengths and competencies are more and more likely to turn into weaknesses as they become exaggerated and weaknesses stay weak. He uses a detailed case history of Horst Schroeder, who was fired as president of Kellogg's after only 9 months, to make these points.

On the usually-correct assumption that your company has not yet brought this new model to bear, the author presents an excellent appendix for helping an individual executive to plan and implement one's own development.

"The message of High Flyers is that leadership ability can be learned, that creating a context that supports the development of talent can become a source of competitive advantage, and that the development of leaders is itself a leadership responsibility." I suggest that you consider Jack Welch at General Electric as the embodiment of the truth of this statement.

Now let me share my concerns about this book. Most companies change strategies at least as often as they change CEOs. Many do it even more often. The average life of a strategy has to be about 3-5 years. That's too short a time to be the context for a leadership development program, unless the new strategy requires exactly the same kind of leaders -- which is unlikely to be the case. In such environments, leadership recruiting probably deserves more attention than leadership development. On the other hand, strategy should not change so often. As my co-author and I point out in The Irresistible Growth Enterprise, it is possible to have a constant mission, vision, and strategy in the midst of a rapidly changing business environment if you think through the issues of potential volatility in advance. In that sort of company, this book's approach will prosper, as will the company and its stakeholders. I urge you to combine these perspectives and approaches in that way.

My other concern is that mission, vision, and emotional context are more important than strategy to success. Professor McCall unaccountably ignored those other important "fit" and "development" issues. They should certainly be added back into this general model by anyone who is interested in systematically developing and providing more and better leadership.

After you have finished reading this excellent book, consider the next governmental election you are asked to vote in. How could government leadership be improved by using a similar process to develop the next generation of elected candidates? Certainly, the task of governing is becoming ever greater yet the current process has all of the flaws of "survival of the fittest" that Professor McCall describes here. We can do better. How should we?

How can this process be used in a nonprofit organization that you do volunteer work for?

This is a marvelously warm and engaging story that is told in three parts about a family deep in the Southern mountains and how they made their lives and dreams unfold. The stories are said to be based on Robert Morgan's own family tales and they carry on the feel of the elders of the family telling the youngsters about life and living and it's true meaning. The dialogue is deceptively simple, creating a warm undercurrent to the intensity of the memories being shared. I adore Robert Morgan and his ability to create such wondrous everyday characters that reach beyond themselves to find love, faith and strength.

Imagine as a small child you sat down in the cozy little living room of your grandmother's home with your brothers and sisters and perhaps a few cousins and your grandma starting sharing stories about her early life. It's in the first person and she's telling about how she came to meet your grandpa and how they made a life together and what it was like opening the West. Now I don't meet the Far West but simply extending life beyond the coastal area of North Carolina inland toward the Mountains and into Tennessee in the 1700s. That's the delightful manner in which Robert Morgan shares information in three parts of the life and times of early settlers, and specific families, around the mountain communities of Asheville, NC (that's 'ASH vul' for those not familiar with the area). There's several surprises so don't think you'll know what's coming. And the language is true to form using such words as painter when talking about a panther. An animal that has mostly been hunted into oblivion in most parts of the US. Each part is told by someone different, several generations apart but through little hooks within each story the reader is provided an opportunity to share in the joys and sorrows of each family. The book is easy reading and keeps your attention throughout and what I especially liked was the sharing of tidbits of information of what was like in those times. This is a book you won't put down once you start it.

I laughed so much during the second part of this book. A young man runs 20 some miles through the forest holding onto a pig's tail with one hand and a hatchet in the other hand to chop a trail for the first road in the area. His adventures during that memorable day make great reading and a good laugh. Anyone who loves the south and mountain folks will appreciate this book from Robert Morgan.

For the most part, this book covers the academic research on semistructured database management that started in the mid-90s (pre-dating the XML explosion - sometimes research is ahead of practice!). Such issues are not that interesting for folks who are doing bread-and-butter client-side XML development, and whose interest in "XML" and "databases" is limited to knowing how Oracle 8i implements its "XML out the top" package. However, the book is relevant to people who are already "in" the semistructured data management space - people who are thinking ahead to some of the potential directions that XML query languages might take, for example. The authors are prominent and well-respected in this area.

One of my main beefs with the book is that it does not really say anything about what XML databases might look like in practice. This is a tall and perhaps unfair order, since we don't yet have standards for XML schemas and query languages. But I have yet to see XML database proponents provide a clear and convincing explanation of why XML is going to be a way to structure stored data as well as a way of transmitting and reformatting data.

The book provides a wonderful link of the three concepts: Relation, Semistructured , and XML. The discussion is clear and concise. We know that Relation is well used in modelling enterprise data today, since the high performance of RDBMS . On the other hand, XML is well accepted the most suitable for business information representation. The author uniformed them under the banner of semistructured data model. The text drives the readers into the insight of the data world even though it is in the abstract level. Anyone can be benifitted by reading it if he want to go deep in the XML and data world.

Read this book and understand it unless you want to flounder around solving problems that these guys already thought through. The book is not a "how-to" guide, but rather a discussion of all the abstract concepts you need to master if you want to do things right. I found this book far more readable than some of the research these guys have published, and a very useful starting point for evaluating various products and technologies related to XML and web data.

I must disagree with the other reviewers. This book was recommended for a undergrad course on DBMS at UC Berkeley. The chapter on relational algebra had lots of good examples, but the book went down hill from there. The SQL examples and problems were trivial and shallow compared to the relational algebra ones. The ESQL section was pretty good, but vendors' on-line reference material made it redundant. While an overview of DBMS implementation was given, it was almost completely useless when we had to write our own DBMS from scratch. The only highlight in this section is a pretty clear example of insertions into a B+ Tree (even though the book calls it a B tree ). All in all I cannot recommend this book.

I took an undergraduate course using this book. I have read other MK published book before and I believe the general principle for these people is... explain simple concepts using the most possible words. The book seemed padded with useless words to explain simple concepts. I had class notes to accompany the lectures and a page worth of material from the lecture notes explained much more than 30 pages from this book.

However, this book does skim through various database implementation (DB2, Oracle, Ingres) and displays the differences between them.

I have found this book to be impractical for reference, it is definitely a 'textbook'. If you're looking for practical SQL usage, you might want to look else where. However, if you're interested in Concepts of Database Programming and Performance Topics then this book might fulfill your needs.

I used the first edition for a database course, and I borrowed the new edition to read a week ago (I just ordered the book today).

I wish PBS would make their hardware shows more like this book. I like to watch them, but one thing bugs me: they show how you drive a screw every 4 ins to retain *this particular* panel, but they don't explain *why* that was necessary. So you don't know how to design the panel yourself, or how to figure out if the panel needs redesigning. This book is full of practical insights that help you analyze and tune a database, not just churn through SQL syntax.

I think this book works best as a complement to your vendor's documentation. It takes you all the way from fundamentals to evaluating transactional benchmarks. The exercises at the end of each chapter teach you not just how to, say, add an index, but also how to evaluate the need for an index and the performance of existing indexes.

(I'd suggest skipping the section on relational algebra unless you're approaching databases from a mathematical background.)

The book contrasts the various database products when necessary, eg in the new object-relational section.

If your database is suddenly running half as fast, or you told the customer the new hardware would speed up response and it didn't, this is the book you need. Better yet, buy it first.