Textbook Critique - Ramakrishnan

I'm rounding up some stray thoughts I've had since finishing my coursework at the U of M. My last and most recent course was CSci 4707, taught by Jaideep Srivastava. The textbook for this course was Database Management Systems, 3e (ISBN 0072465638), authored by Raghu Ramakrishnan and Johannes Gehrkes.

Setting aside for a later entry my concerns about the course itself, here's a partial list of why this text was simply abysmal:

1. Stylistically, the prose is an utter hack job. The book literally starts with the clunker "The amount of information available to us is literally exploding, ...". Editors, it's time to literally do your job.
2. For a third edition, this book has far too many errors. The Perl section alone was enough to make me curse the author/editor/proofreader. I shudder to think of the suffering imposed on students using the first and second editions.
3. No errata are available on the book's website. This is the final nail in the coffin for me--it's reasonable for errors to eventually be found; why not provide them to the readers of the book? The textbook is the primary student resource for most courses; not providing errata is negligent.
   
4. Superior textbooks are available. I've since seen textbooks used by coworkers in similar courses that are comparable in production quality, recent, clearer, and with far fewer errors.
   

On the bright side, I did buy the textbook used (cheap!) on Amazon, and resell it to another poor student the same way as soon as I could. So my pain at the hands of this utter flop of a book was only intellectual, not fiscal.