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Ask HN: What book would you recommend for learning basic database theory?

3 points by alphanumeric0 ↗ HN
I want to have a better understanding of things like:

* CAP theorem * ACID or BASE (and the pros and cons of each) * some commonly used data structures / algorithms a database system uses under the hood * graph databases * relational database normalization

..and related concepts.

3 comments

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Davidbrcz
Just Google up database theory. You'll find a lot of lecture material about it with often references books.
brudgers
Database Systems, The Complete Book, any old edition is good enough and will be cheap.

It won't cover all those topics you mention. It will provide the background for understanding them because they all stand in relation to relational databases...you know, the basic theory you mentioned will give you the vocabulary to understand what people are talking about and some background toward understanding the advantages/tradeoffs of non-relational models like graph databases.

The other resource is The Red Book. It's free and online. But...though it covers current trends, most of the papers it contains tend to assume that the reader understands the relational model.