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Search in Book Reviews

The ACCU passes on review copies of computer books to its members for them to review. The result is a large, high quality collection of book reviews by programmers, for programmers. Currently there are 1949 reviews in the database and more every month.
Search is a simple string search in either book title or book author. The full text search is a search of the text of the review.
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Title:
Object Oriented Database Design Clearly Explained
Author:
Jan Harrington
ISBN:
0 12 326428 6
Publisher:
Morgan Kaufmann
Pages:
312
Price:
£24-95
Reviewer:
Silvia de Beer
Subject:
database
Appeared in:
OL37
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.