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 17 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 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.

It's geek sugar! - 2010-01-16
Reviewer Rating:
Mana Takahashi, The Manga Guide to Databases (No Starch Press, 2004)

No Starch Press, one of the great repositories of Linux knowledge in America, bills itself as "the finest in geek entertainment." True, that, and they have outdone themselves in this regard by importing, translating, and publishing Ohmsha Press' edumanga series of books. I've been intrigued by these for a few years, and I figured the best place to start would be with one where I'm conversant with the material; that way I could make comments that are at least halfway intelligent. (Assuming any of my comments are halfway intelligent; I leave that to the reader to decide.) The Manga Guide to Databases was the obvious choice, given that I've been a database administrator/developer/what-have-you for fifteen years now. And if the rest of the series is as solid as this one, then I may have found a new meaning for the phrase "made of awesome." If I were a teacher (I don't have the patience for it) doing an intro to databases course, this would be one of the texts.

The setting is the Kingdom of Kon, a small island nation whose GNP come from fruit exports. While the king and queen are off touring some of the nations that import Kon's fruit, they've left Princess Ruruna and her trusty aide Cain in charge. When an increase in the price of apples goes horribly wrong, Ruruna realizes Kon needs a better way to manage its business. Enter Tico the Database Fairy, who spends the book teaching Ruruna and Cain about the benefits of storing business data in a relational database, teaching them how to design, construct, and use a simple business database. There's also a romantic subplot with Ruruna and the prince of a neighboring kingdom that adds a bit of interest for folks who look at this sort of thing as a chore.

Simply put, this is great stuff. There are a few things that could probably have been done better (Takahashi uses FROM x,y WHERE clauses instead of using JOINs, for example), but I assume some things were done the way they are for maximum portability; JOINs aren't terribly common in MyISAM databases, for example (at least judging by the MySQL books I've been reading). Still, if you're using this as a text for teaching a class, you can add in supplementary material about the bits that aren't here, or that are taught differently than you'd do it. But as far as getting students to read and understand the material, you may be hard-pressed to find a book that's this fun anywhere else, and students who have fun while learning are happy students. Well worth your time. ****

Good Book - 2010-01-19
Reviewer Rating:
"The Manga Guide to Databases" by No Starch press takes on the task of
teaching the fundamentals of databases and their design through the
colorful and cheerful world of manga. As the story goes, Princess
Ruruna is in trouble. Her parents have just run off to vacation in
some far away land, and left the entire "Kingdom of God" in her hands.
Ruruna has no idea how do run a kingdom, and to top it off it seems
the three branches of her government keep getting their data mixed up
as they have no central storage for their information. Just as it
looks like all hope is lost, Ruruna's parents send a book that
contains a magical fairy. This fairy is not ordinary fairy though,
this is a "database fairy" that is here to teach Ruruna about
databases that will help save her kingdom.
Using this story and great looking graphics "The Manga Guide to
Databases" covers almost all the fundamentals of databases.
Normalization, basic SQL, and even database operational management are
all topics covered, while keeping its upbeat style and humor. I was
surprised to see just how well this book was able to explain some of
the more complected aspects of database creation while keeping its
simple style of explanation. This would be a great book for any that
wants a quick overview of databases without having to deal with a
mundane textbook you have to trench through. This book could even be
read by young adults that are interested in learning technical topics
like databases.

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.

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