At Stanford, we are on the quarter system, and as a result, our introductory database instruction is divided into two courses. The first, CS145, is designed for students who will use database systems but, not necessarily take a job im plementing a DBMS. It is a prerequisite for CS245, which is the introduction to DBMS implementation. Students wishing to go further in the database field then take CS345 (special topics), CS346 (DBMS implementation project), and CS347 (transaction processing and distributed databases).

Starting in 1997, we published a pair of books. A First Course in Database Systems was designed for CS145, and Database System Implementation was for CS245 and parts of CS346. Because many schools are on the semester system or combine the two kinds of database instruction into one introductory course, we felt that there was a need to produce the two books as a single volume, which we call Database Systems: The Complete Book.

Written by well-known computer scientists, this accessible and succinct introduction to database systems focuses on database design and use. It provides in-depth coverage of databases from the point of view of the database designer, user, and application programmer. The authors provide an overview of important programming systems (e.g., SQL, JDBC, PSM, CLI, PHP, XQuery, etc.) and the intellectual framework to put them into context.  For software engineers, database engineers, and programmers.