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BOOK REVIEWS
46 MacDirectory
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REVIEWS BY RIC GETTER
The Manga Guide to
Databases
Prince Raminess, the local heartthrob who
simply assumes that he will have the lovely
Princess Ruruna's hand in marriage, is
graced with incredibly good looks (and a
proportionally abundant ego) but not a
whole lot in terms of intelligence. The
good princess doesn't particularly care at
the moment because her father left her in
charge of the kingdom's thriving fruit
export business whose recordkeeping,
quite frankly, is a total mess. As always, her
bright and able assistant, Cain, is there to
help. He delivers an old book, a gift from
her father out of which sprung the
magical fairy Tico, ready to teach Ruruna
and Cain how a database can save the
kingdom's business.
Characters? Plots? In a technical book
review? Okay, we agree it's out of the
ordinary but in the case of this remarkable
import from No Starch Press, it actually
works.
The Manga Guide to Databases is
the second in a series of translations of
Mana Takahashi's bestselling books from
Japan. These books combine manga (the
comic book style wildly popular with
readers of all ages in Japan) and text-
based chapter summaries and quizzes to
introduce what are normally abstract and
arcane technical, mathematical and
scientific topics to an audience quickly
and easily in a relatively painless manner.
The Manga Guide to Databases sets up a
situation where information has become
acutely unmanageable and uses it to
illustrate what relational databases are,
how they're designed, how they're used
and how they're secured. By the end of
the third chapter, you'll have learned a
good deal of the entity/relationship
model, been introduced to complex
vocabulary of database structure and
discovered how to refine a design through
the three normal forms. By the forth
chapter, you'll understand the basics of
SQL (and find out about Ruruna's
deepening affection for Cain).
Takahashi doesn't expect you to be
prepared to take on the role of your
company's database administrator when
you finish her book. However, a rather
enjoyable afternoon of reading and a bit of
studying will give you a huge edge when
you embark on your first formal course in
the subject or if you just need to prep for a
meeting your company's database guru.
For an American audience, this is certainly
an off-the-beaten-path approach to
technical training. However, its ability to
effectively plunge into a topic that can be
a morass of arcane theory is undeniable.
Over the years, we've learned to expect
the unexpected from No Starch Press. This
is one book where the result is
unexpectedly successful.
The Manga Guide to Databases
by Mana Takahashi
(illustrated by Shoko Azuma)
No Starch Press