At first glance, this might seem like a good textbook. However, after having to deal with it for 3/4 of a semester, I've learned to not judge a book by its cover.

First of all, formulas are not presented in a way that is helpful. Facts should be highlighted and processes explained more clearly and concisely. As a non-programmer (I've taken web programming, computer science 1 and 2 up through binary trees), I felt that the symbols used for representing a lot of the rules were more confusing, and the text didn't help much in the explanation of what these combinations of symbols actually represented. Luckily I had a friend who could help me sum up what these things meant!

Our instructor also posted solutions to the problems from the instructor's book. One week there were 5 corrections for 10 homework problems (where the meat of the problem was actually approached in the WRONG WAY). Not to mention the multiple typos that any spell checker could have found.

For $[money], I'm sure there's a better textbook out there. To quote one of my friends, there is a better interpretation of Jim Gray's quote:

"This is a great book!" (I didn't read it at all!)
"This is the book I wish I had written!" (Then it wouldn't be so messed up and I'd be rolling in the dough!)...

First I need to explain my background: I only knew a little about databases and SQL in general, but I knew the topic was rather complex and very broad. Since I wanted to understand how transactions are implemented I decided to find a book on them and stumbled upon this book; I am glad I did.

Do I now understand how transactions are implemented? Not 100%, but certainly a great deal more so than before I read this books' chapters on transactions. Indeed, I am far more equiped to work with transactions because this book helped me understand what is going on "under the hood". While it wasn't "code level" details, it certainly satisfied this novices' thirst for a general understanding of transaction implementation plus it piqued my curiousity to go on and learn more about transactions as written by the likes of Gray.

Further, I have been given a nice introduction to Database Theory and the topic of Entity Relationships - an entire study of how best to design our data, which before hand I was completely unaware of!

Two chapters seemed rather difficult and one of the authors was kind enough to suggest I study Susanna Epp's fine "Discrete Mathematics with Applications" before heading back into foray of DB theory.

So, all and all, I found this book a delight and well worth working through.

Database and Transaction Processing by Philip M. Lewis, et al. is written as a multi-purpose textbook and practical reference guide for software engineers. One can use this book both as an undergraduate introductory course in database theory and design, as an advanced graduate-level course in databases, or as a graduate level course in transaction processing.

Being outside of the academia, but still needing a foundational theoretical (but not necessarily formal or overly detailed) reference, I was impressed on the ability of the authors to present concise and useful practical facts. Some other textbooks suffer from overwrought attention to topics in database normalization, correctness proves, and such - this one gives a lot of practical advise in optimization, distributed databases and issues of concurrency control and transaction processing. Chapters are organized in a self-contained fashion, so with a bit of background in databases, reader can just read a chapter in isolation if she is interested in a topic.

In summary, a very useful book.