Most books on databases start with a definition of a database and rarely linger long on the question of what data are and how data and information are related. Krishna’s book is no different in this respect; information and data are terms used interchangeably. This approach often goes hand in hand with an underestimation of the semantic problems that arise in database construction and an all-too-optimistic opinion of the capabilities of the various conceptual models available to support the representation of ever more complex business and social domains. Here again Krishna’s book conforms to the stereotype.

The book starts out with the usual introduction to the database environment in the first chapter and moves on in the next three chapters to look at the relational model in some depth, including normalization, and the languages that can manipulate relational data models (SQL, QUEL, and Query-by-example). Chapter 5 examines the other two classic data models, the network and hierarchical, and again presents the manipulation languages. The physical organization of data is introduced in the next chapter, with sections on different ways of ordering and accessing the files. Chapter 7 discusses the elements of database design, but confusingly touches on conceptual modeling in the form of the extended entity-relationship model. The following three chapters cover material concerning the implementation and management of databases, looking first at integrity and security and then, in chapters 9 and 10, at transactions and concurrency control and query optimization. The final two chapters cover the more recent topics of deductive and object-oriented databases.

The author’s stated purpose is to write a textbook to support senior undergraduate studies in the traditional database material and to cover deductive databases and object-oriented systems. He claims that the book can also be used by management students who want a better understanding of the technology. Certainly, any reader would need to have completed an introductory course in computer systems, or else this material would be hard going.

For the most part this goal is achieved, in that this is a model textbook in many respects. Undoubtedly the strongest point is the organization of the material, which is well marshalled and drafted and exemplary as a pedagogical aid, with well-structured chapters replete with summaries, exercises, and bibliographic notes at the end of the core text. A particularly good section on the physical organization of data is a paragon of clarity and totally up to date. Not far short of this standard are the parts dealing with relational algebra and manipulations, although Krishna’s belief in the overwhelming efficacy of the relational model for representing “external world relationships” flies in the face of much research to the contrary [1].

The length is appropriate for a textbook of this sort, the index is adequate without being more than that, and the typos are thankfully few, apart from the odd missing definite article and the occasional substitution of “scheme” for “schema.”

Many references have been provided for each topic, and they ensure that the students will gain a thorough grounding in the key literature. Unfortunately, the exercises in database textbooks all seem to come from the same source and the effect is rather like hearing different comedians who use the same gag writers: you tend to feel that you have heard or seen the material somewhere before.

Clearly, the decision to add material concerning deductive and object-oriented systems has been made to lift the text from the mire of mediocre books on databases that are weighing down the bookshelves of vendors. This element is not well integrated into the rest, however. The title of the book includes the term “knowledge-base systems,” and for less than 25 pages of fairly elementary Prolog, this claim seems exaggerated.

One blessing is the complete absence of the normally abundant multicolored glossy illustrations of banal burnished boxes that most publishers seem to perceive as the sine qua non of undergraduate textbooks in this field. How pleasant to have only prose and line drawings upon which to exercise the ocular faculties.

The problem is that many other traditional database textbooks at this level are on the market. Spreading the field of concern to include knowledge-based systems could well render the book more attractive to students of information systems but requires more than mere cosmetic adjustment. Some naïve notions are espoused in this arena: the potential for computer systems, in the guise of deductive databases, of “having the ability to reason” (p. 274) and the idea that logic programming is “expected to result in simpler and error-free programs” have already been abandoned in many quarters. They smack of the mid-Eighties optimism that filled the coffers of research centers working on artificial intelligence but drained resources from others with less-inflated expectations about the potential for computers to replace human intelligence. We are still awaiting the expected results.

A likely future for this book, with its good, clear, and uncluttered treatment of the core matters, will be in the growing Indian subcontinental academic market, where  Krishna  is well known. In the West, I do not see it replacing other well-established textbooks.