Database Systems Engineering

Nick Ryan & Dan Smith

International Thomson Computer Press, 1995. ISBN 1-85032-115-9

List of known errors in 1st edition

Many of these errors have been corrected in subsequent reprints, but some still remain. In particular, the smart quotes problem persists in many parts of the book.

p7: Figure 1.1

Some horizontal and vertical lines have disappeared from this diagram, probably as a result of multiple transfers between PCs and Macs.

• Horizontal line missing between:
  • DBMS Software and Conceptual Schema
• Vertical lines missing between
  • External Schema 2 and Conceptual Schema
  • Conceptual Schema and Internal Schema
  • Internal Schema and Hardware ...

pp13-16 and 168-183:

Unfortunately, someone turned on smart quotes between page proofs and printing. This problem appears throughout the book. A few incorrect opposed pairs appear on these pages. The quotes should follow the C and SQL standard notations and use pairs of single quotes (') for SQL character constants and C character types, and double quote (") symbols for C string constants.

pp231-234: Section 9.3.1 Logic languages

Opposed pairs of quotes again, this time in PROLOG. All string constants should be enclosed in ' characters.

p240: Figure 10.3 Unrepeatable read

pp281-282: Sort-merge Join

    Sort R on R(a)
    Sort S on S(b)
    read first tuple from R
    read first tuple from S
    while (tuple R exists) 
        while (R(a) > S(b))
            read next tuple from S
        if R(a) = S(b)
            concatenate the tuples
            put concatenated tuple on the result
        read next tuple from R

p309: Section 13.3.4 Join

There are several errors in the join notation as printed here.

• In para 2, the join notation should read: , also written
• In the following sentence, the words 'theta join' should be bold.
• In para 3, the equijoin notation should read:

p310: Figure 13.10 Natural Join

There are several errors in the Appointment table and one in the result, R. The sixth row of R should have a DoctorID value of 52, not 50, and the Appointment table should be as follows:

Doctor ID	Patient ID	Appt Date	Appt Time
50	100	1994-08-10	10:00:00
50	100	1994-08-16	10:50:00
50	102	1994-08-21	11:20:00
50	103	1994-08-10	10:10:00
50	104	1994-08-10	10:20:00
52	102	1994-08-10	10:00:00
52	105	1994-08-10	10:10:00
53	106	1994-08-10	11:30:00

p311: Semijoin

• On line 2 the notation should read:

pp321: Chapter 14 SQL

In the CREATE TABLE statement for the person table, the column last_name should be of type VARCHAR(24).

pp329-365

The opposed pairs of quotes problem is at its worst in this chapter. Again all SQL character constants should be enclosed in '...'. From p353 on, the embedded SQL examples also include opposed pairs of double quotes which should be replaced by "...".

p 344:

In the second text paragraph, T.Williams' date of birth has the wrong year (1981). It should be 1972.

pp371,373-376, 379-380, 383 and 404-406:

The opposed pairs of quotes problem continues in the following two chapters, but note that in POSTQUEL, "..." is used for character constants.

p406: Section 16.7 Summary

The last word of the 2nd line is should be the number 15.

p414: Sizeup

On line 6, B-tree searches should be O(logN), not O(N logN).

Last updated: 9th February 1998