
Readings in Database Systems (the red book) - Maro
http://redbook.cs.berkeley.edu/
======
mapleoin
I thought the Red Book was _Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-Tung_

But anyway... What makes this book special? The website is not so great. Got a
review maybe?

~~~
Maro
[http://www.amazon.com/review/RGXWU3TSSJ3RT/ref=cm_cr_rdp_per...](http://www.amazon.com/review/RGXWU3TSSJ3RT/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm)

The text of the review:

This book is well-known in academic database circles as "The Red Book" (in
fact, the editors maintain a useful web site at
<http://redbook.cs.berkeley.edu/>) and is a canonical resource in those
circles. It's primarily intended as a reader/textbook for a graduate course in
database systems and has a heavy emphasis on implementation issues. It
contains a fair number of classic papers that should be read by anybody who
actually works on database engines as well as a number of more recent papers
that should be read by anyone who does research in database systems. The
usefulness for end-users of databases (i.e., application writers) is unclear.
The 3rd edition, in my opinion, improves upon the 2nd edition considerably. Of
course, it freshens the paper selection in some areas. More importantly, it
prunes the number of subject areas considerably, resulting in a more
manageable collection (in more ways than one!). For example, a great deal of
work was performed in the late 1980s and early 1990s in areas such as
extensibility and active database management. By the late 1990s, the
SQL3/SQL1999 train had already left the station - work still goes on in these
areas, but at a greatly reduced rate. Conversely, data mining and decision
analysis have become hugely important areas, and the new Red Book has a
section on it.

If there's a place where this book "missed the boat," it would probably be in
terms of applications. The editors cut the section on user interfaces and
programming models and have always ignored unstructured/semistructured data
models. In these days of the Web, this choice is questionable; on the other
hand, a lot of the most reasonable work in these areas has in fact appeared
since 1998, so it's a bit hard to criticize with any degree of fairness!

~~~
CalmQuiet
Actually 4th edition (2005, 877pp) link at amz is:
[http://www.amazon.com/Readings-Database-Systems-Joseph-
Helle...](http://www.amazon.com/Readings-Database-Systems-Joseph-
Hellerstein/dp/0262693143/)

Doesn't seem to be selling like Harry Potter. ...and must be considered a text
book, since Amz is only allowing 10% off the $60 cover price.

------
st3fan
I thought the Red Book was the OpenGL Programming Guide.

Good stuff anyway :-)

~~~
dfox
And also CDDA specification :)

For some reason there are many books that are referred to by color of it's
cover (or some totally unrelated color), I know about half a dozen things that
are more or less specified by something widely known as "Blue book".

~~~
mahmud
And the Postscript manual, and the SML Basis Library reference.

~~~
moe
It's also the name of the CD Audio standard.

