This book is a practical introduction to database management for applications programmers, database administrators, and workstation users entering the client/server environment. It includes a tutorial on database-management concepts, explained with standard SQL, and offers a comprehensive survey of client/server technology. The authors provide a balanced presentation of database management and distributed application development, case studies comparing the capabilities and interfaces of dominant database servers such as EE, RDB, Oracle, and SQL Server. The focus is on relational database management with special emphasis on transaction processing, data integrity, security, and application programming interfaces for major commercial products. Includes: Features and performance of commercial database servers Individual SQL dialects compared to the standard Server administration requirements Benchmarking techniques SQL applications in heterogeneous environments Application programming interfaces to the servers Future directions for SQL client/server architectures