This is my first database book as I'm thinking of a big career change, and on the surface as I initially flipped through this book at a bookstore, I thought the layout looked newbie-friendly. However, even with my lack of "tech" knowledge, I caught a lot of careless errors strewn throughout the book, and not so nominal (e.g., contradictions in definitions). But so far, I've been able to solve the errors without difficulty, and learn something from this book, although many examples they use to illustrate concepts can be difficult to follow. Hopefully, if this book makes it to a 2nd edition, significant revisions will have been made with more careful editing.Most of the previous reviews for this book have been pretty accurate (I don't always agree with the reviews on Amazon), and I regret not heeding them in purchasing this book.