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The problem with the standards is that getting copies costs actual money. If one really wants to start learning about databases, it can be very difficult to decide what to pay for. Implementation documentation, at least, is generally free.

For books, I've heard good things about http://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Database-Systems-Ramez-El..., though I haven't read it myself.

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I completely agree. My intent was to suggest that one should learn to the standard first rather than any particular implementation, not that one should read any of the actual standards documents directly. (Yikes!) By analogy, if you want to learn C, read K&R to learn something approximating C89, rather than picking up a book on how to code to the specific dialect of C understood by GCC 4.5.

For what it is worth, I learned from Database Systems: The Complete Book.

http://www.amazon.com/Database-Systems-Complete-Book-2nd/dp/...

DS:TCB is pretty explicit about which of the SQL it teaches is part of which standard. That said, I suspect that any general database book should do a reasonable job.

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