Want to learn about databases without the tedium? With its unique combination of Japanese-style comics and serious educational content, The Manga Guide to Databases is just the book for you.

Princess Ruruna is stressed out. With the king and queen away, she has to manage the Kingdom of Kod's humongous fruit-selling empire. Overseas departments, scads of inventory, conflicting prices, and so many customers! It's all such a confusing mess. But a mysterious book and a helpful fairy promise to solve her organizational problems-with the practical magic of databases.

In The Manga Guide to Databases, Tico the fairy teaches the Princess how to simplify her data management. We follow along as they design a relational database, understand the entity-relationship model, perform basic database operations, and delve into more advanced topics. Once the Princess is familiar with transactions and basic SQL statements, she can keep her data timely and accurate for the entire kingdom. Finally, Tico explains ways to make the database more efficient and secure, and they discuss methods for concurrency and replication.

Examples and exercises (with answer keys) help you learn, and an appendix of frequently used SQL statements gives the tools you need to create and maintain full-featured databases.

(Of course, it wouldn't be a royal kingdom without some drama, so read on to find out who gets the girl-the arrogant prince or the humble servant.)

This EduManga book is a translation of a bestselling series in Japan, co-published with Ohmsha, Ltd., of Tokyo, Japan.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 15 Ratings

A suprisingly superb database book - 2009-06-10
Reviewer Rating:
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.

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!

[...]

Great intro to databases and SQL - 2009-05-04
Reviewer Rating:
I have used relational databases for years. I've used them to store mailing lists, email account data for postfix, blog and forum data, and more. They are convenient and powerful time savers. Most of what I have learned has been indirectly learned while studying something else; documentation for a computer programming language like PHP or Python, a book on website design for commerce, or documentation and code for an open source project like Wordpress or Drupal. As a result, my knowledge is adequate for simple tasks and queries, but I'm nowhere near ready to be a database admin. What I know is incomplete, adequate for my actual needs, but with gaping holes in my knowledge.

Until this week, I was comfortable with this fact.

I found this systematic and foundational introduction to database design clear, interesting, and enjoyable--so much so that I have ordered a few more books on database theory and design and SQL for further study. Contrast that with the indirect introductions I have previously encountered that made me want to ignore the topic, except for the aspects vital to my task(s) at hand.

The Manga Guide to Databases uses a somewhat silly, but pleasant story with well drawn artwork to ease the reader into a complicated subject that requires paying a bit of attention to for comprehension. It begins with the assumption that the reader knows nothing about the topic, so it would be perfect as a base level introductory text, especially for high school aged readers (or those of us who are a bit older, but who still enjoy a bit of whimsy).

We start with the question "What is a database?" and a great description of how and why they are useful. We move into a basic definition of relational databases with a very brief mention of other types of databases that exist. The fun continues with a chance to design a database around the model of entities and relationships.

Once the foundation is laid with a conceptual understanding of databases and their design, structured query language (SQL) is introduced. I was thrilled to discover this wasn't product specific language, but rather standard ANSI, at least as far as I can tell (okay, I know a little more than I let on earlier, but I still consider myself a database/SQL novice). That is great, because it means that whatever is learned here should apply anywhere, whether using MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, Access, Microsoft SQL Server, or whatever, so long as the product conforms to the standard. This certainly isn't a complete SQL introductory text, but it is enough to get a person started understanding the basic concepts and how to operate a database.

Ultimately, the book was a success. I wouldn't kid anyone into thinking that reading and understanding this book would make a person capable of real database administration, but it does give a clear and solid foundation for further study, and in my case has whet my appetite for going back to fill in some personal knowledge gaps that I have been content to let exist for a very long time.

Great Introducation to Database Concepts! - 2009-06-08
Reviewer Rating:
DISCLAIMER: I received a review copy of this book from the publisher.

As a self-confessed relational database geek, I've always been frustrated by my inability to explain the importance of seemingly-esoteric concepts like normalization to the average, often self-taught database user. So, I admit I came to The Manga Guide to Databases with a bit of a bias: I wanted to find an accessible introduction to basic database concepts, with the hope that someone else might be able to present a friendlier and convincing argument than I myself ever could. At the same time, the idea of making a textbook into a comic book seemed a bit off-putting; I was sure it must be light on actual content. Fortunately for me, The Manga Guide to Databases far surpassed my expectations in every respect.

Well-illustrated with an engaging (if cutesy) style, The Manga Guide to Databases covers far more than I could have hoped, from normalization to security to concurrency; it even taught me a couple things! The story is not only entertaining, but provides a consistent real-world (okay, fantasy-world) context that gives life to examples and helps the concepts "click" inside your head. If you have trouble understanding why you should care about normalization, give this book a read!

Make no mistake, if you're looking for a primary reference book, you won't find one here. Database-agnostic and light on actual SQL and repetitive examples, this book is probably best in combination with a more comprehensive (and boring) reference to help you apply it to your specific situation using a specific database management system. Still, it's a wonderful explanation of necessary concepts, and I think the average database class could benefit from this book, even as a primary textbook (with proper references and assignments to hammer home the concepts).

In the end, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend The Manga Guide to Databases to anyone who works with or wants to learn about relational databases, casually, professionally or as a student.

Dadtbases - 2009-09-14
Reviewer Rating:
Great book. Love the story form. The kids like it and get to learn. One of my kids like to draw and love the pictures.

Creative way to learn about databases, nothing to technical - 2009-05-15
Reviewer Rating:
If you have ever thought to yourself, "man, I really love comics", and "man, I really love tech books", and you just happen to be thinking about learning something about databases, then this is the book for you!

Let me start by saying that seasoned professionals will not really need to spend any time with this book, this is for beginners, and speficially beginners who like manga. The book is short with only about 220 pages. Contained in those pages is the story of a young princess, Ruruna, and her asistant, Cain. The two are tasked with running the Kingdom of Kod while Ruruna's father is off on Kingdom business (read, gallivanting the country side).

Father is kind enough however to send a book to Ruruna that just might help her restore the Kingdom of Kod to proper. What book? Well simply a book on databases!

When the young princess opens the book out pops a fairy named, Tico. Tico is all about databases! Tico is also all about teaching about databases!

The book was really a fun read, although it did have it's drawbacks being animated. It wasn't hard reading, each chapter is only about 30 pages. There are 6 chapters in all each with a different and distinct purpoes in mind.

The comic part of the book [pdf] is short in each chapter and is followed by plain text explanations of what you just watched the characters go through. Being partially seasoned in databases myself nothing was too shocking or hard to understand, with the exception of normalization.

The glaring problem in this book is static imagery is not really helpful in explaining normalization of tables, and data. In fact it was quite murky. I am sure if you want you can try and read the comic part again and again, and you will still probably come out wondering what exactly Tico was tryign to conveig. At the same time, my hat goes off for trying. Luckily as I mentioned before the text at the end of the chapter saved the day. It was clear and consise, a great follow up to the crazy naming, story telling, explanation Tico gave.

Some of the terminology was a bit off, but not so much so that you couldn't figure out the right terms when a real DBA starts talking with you about the ins and outs of a database.

I particularly enjoyed the short quizes at the end of each chapter. 5-10 questions about what you just read to make sure you really understood it. I will say though that some of the questions were better done with paper sitting by, unless you like marking up books (I don't).

There is a bit of a love story line in the book, but it isn't so overwhelming as to ruin the knowledge gaining premise of the book, and the plot is sort of thin, like really really really thin. If you don't get in the first few story boards what I am talking about... then you need to read more books.

Don't get this book if you are serious about learning about the deep dark secrets of databases. They touch on some more advanced topics like views, stored procedures and transactions, but nothing more than giving you a brief idea of what they are, or how they would be used.

I would say this is a great book for college students, or twenty-somethings that want to learn quickly about databases. Again the information contain in this book is very basic, but it is enought to make you understand the basics, and whet your appetite for more.

This is not a book on SQL, MySQL, SQL Server, postgres or Oracle. They do not cover any setup or maintenance of the databases. They barely discuss any of the technical information you would normally be looking for, but, it is a fun beginners book.

The book was fun, it was educational, but it isn't going to teach you the advanced techniques you need to write DBA on your resume.

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