Instruct: Classify a given review as either positive or negative.
Query: Definitely NOT FOR BEGINNERS

I bought this book after reading several favorable recommendations. Unfortunately, they were all from people who had some prior knowledge of SQL and "assumed" that this book would be good for beginners, because it made complete sense to them when they read it.Having no SQL knowledge whatsoever, I had a hard time trying to fish out little SQL code tidbits that I could run myself, and thereby learn by doing. This book really discourages that. (See the reader review from 1998-04-10.)If you are new to SQL, try Teach Yourself SQL in 24 hours (don't let the title throw you) from Sam's Publishing, which I found to be much better suited for neophytes.Also, the author is member of Ansi SQL standards committee, and it shows. He talks about esoteric SQL topics, i.e. comparing facets of SQL-92 to sQL-89, etc. Not only does this get in the way of the useful content, it is usually an irrelevant distraction that the reader could do without.