Review: The Manga Guide to Databases

Most of my friends and colleagues had to laugh when I told about or showed them this manga guide. Though this book is really fun to read and contains many subtle jokes, it's not something to dismiss as some crazy comic book.



Don't fool yourself, under the happy Manga lies a superb learning book on databases. The book deals with the fundamentals in a clear, quick and fun way. It's quite amazing how some conceptually difficult topics are explained in such a short book. The book brought a clear understanding of some things a 4-year bachelor's study on the subject failed to clearly explain. I hated everything Database before I read this book. Mostly because I felt it was a dry and boring subject and this idea was supported by terribly boring, big fat books with a lot of difficult language.

The book tackles all you need to know to be able to design, use and maintain a database. Subjects such as Database normalization, Database design, ERD models, SQL, ACID, locking mechanisms, query and database optimization, security, architecture, stored procedures and database replication are all explained wonderfully. There are exercises on each topic, and answers are provided a few pages further.



One of the strong points of the book is that it succeeds in explaining some very practical things without being implementation dependent. All the knowledge you gain from this book will be applicable to any database system.

The author is a sheer didactic genius! Repetition is cleverly hidden in comics, written out paragraphs, drawings and exercises. You hardly notice you are actually learning Your thought process is guided by the main characters in the book and a few hours later you know all the Database fundamentals.

People who care about the environment can also enjoy this book since it's been printed on some nice quality Sustainable Forestry Initiative paper. A nice way to read responsibly.

This book is by far the best book I have read on the subject. I think this book absolutely rocks and recommend it to anyone working with or just interested in databases.

Everything should have it's own Manga Guide!