Customer Reviews

Advanced Transact-SQL for SQL Server 2000

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(16)
1 star:		(41)

 

 

I was a little surprised when I read some of the negative reviews on this book. It has become the most used book in my library of late and I find it very helpful and easy to use. The code examples are short, clear and to the point. The topics are well indexed and logically grouped, making it very easy to find examples of what I need to know. So many other books in this category are designed for either Database Administration or Developers embedding SQL in applications. This book is aimed at people who code SQL in MS SQL Server. It focuses on how to write the most optimized queries and gives practical tips that make it easier to write and debug SQL.

I am somewhere in between a Beginner and an Advanced user. I have been coding simple embedded SQL for 5 years as a VB developer and recently writing more complex stored procedures. This book has been the most practical SQL reference I have found, much more helpful than the online help. It is has not been a "waste of time" or "beginner level at best" for me. I have learned quite a bit about SQL from this book and I thought I was fairly knowledgeable before I read it.

Others in my department have also purchased this book and it has become the standard reference many of us use to answer SQL questions. If you are looking for a practical reference to common and advanced questions, you will find this book very useful.

One of the problems with a lot of computer books these days is that they try to cover a wide range of topics without _really_ delving into anything. This is one such book. It will tell you what a stored procedure is, how to code it, what some of the syntax is - the basics - without really going into the details. In other words, you won't learn anything from this book that you couldn't learn on your own in an afternoon with the Books Online and Query Analyzer. The SQL presented in this book is neither advanced nor SQL Server 2K specific, and I think you'd be wasting your money to buy it.

I have been writing SQL for a few years, and I have almost every book on TSQL. When I glanced over this book, I thought it was pretty good, but I waited until I saw the reviews on Amazon.com to get a second opinion. As the reviews were mostly negative, I did not buy the book back then.

Then some time later and with some spare money in hand, I got to the bookstore and this was the ONLY book on TSQL that I did not already own. So I caved in and bought it. This was a very wise move! The help given to me by this book has made it a more than worthwhile investement. I have over 10 SQL servers and have to maintain and write code for all of them. This books has been extraordinary help.

I you know very little of SQL, do not buy this book, get an intro book instead. But if you have "some" experience with SQL, then this is a great book to get deeper into TSQL. I will change the way you write code and make you a better TSQL developer.

Which leads me to wonder about the SQL capabilities of the writers of those negative reviews.... hum ;-)

In reading through the many reviews on this book, I notice that we have a bi-modal distribution. Intermediate users love it, and truly advanced users give it low marks.

The sub-title on the back cover is a better clue to what this book is about than the title -- "Practical T-SQL Solutions to Common Problems."

If you've sorted through your initial newbie issues about SQL and SQL Server and want to take your skills to the next level, you will find this book extremely worthwhile. If you're already an advanced T-SQL type looking for deeper insights, you'll probably be dissapointed.

I think it is great that we have a book devoted to the relational parts of the TSQL language, but not diving too much into the technical aspects of TSQL (like system stored procedures etc). This is a programming book, for those who wish to take their TSQL knowledge a step further. Perhaps not as advanced as the title suggets, but a great book for anyone at the intermediate level. Also, the book does cover some more advanced topics like dynamic order by, handling hierarchies etc. One of the books on my recommendation list!

If you've read Rob Viera's book, Professional SQL 7/2000 Programming, then your ready for this one. This book reads like a FAQ for common problems and solutions posted to the various listserves and newsgroups for SQL Server.

No, this book is not as advanced as many people (myself included) would have liked. Yes, there are a few parts that are poorly written. The honest truth is that this is not the book I had hoped it would be, but the TSQL community has needed a book like this for a while - not the bare basics, but not too advanced. It's certainly better than the one and two star ratings its been given by other readers. When your finished with this one, check out Henderson's Guru's Guide to TSQL.

This book has lots of worked problems and solutions. For example, the authors show how to remove duplicates, handle hierarchies, auditing, pivot tables, password encryption, case sensitive searches, opening a cursor on a stored proc call, doing your own sort order, etc. It would be nice to have the code on CD, instead of downloading.

I have followed Itzik Ben-Gan's columns in SQL Server Magazine and I found his articles addressing some of the trickier problems frequently faced by SQL developers. The solutions presented have almost always been very elegant and changed one's perspective of looking at a whole class of problems.
This book is distilled from a lot of those very clever articles from SQL Server Magazine [and then some] and I heartily recommend this book to tickle your SQL senses. [I am very surprised with the number of negative reviews for this book, believe me, it does not deserve it].

I am glad I got this book that I can learn so much from it. This book offers practical solutions with complete explanations. It has full of helpful examples of SQL scripts to explore to gain ideas on what to do and what not to do. I really like it.

There's so much wrong with this book that I really don't know where to begin, but here's my top ten in no particular order:

1. It's written very, very poorly. Everything from silly, gradeschool analogies to terrible grammar, to convoluted explanations can be found in abundance. I literally laughed out loud at some of the horrendous prose the book serves up.

2. The book is loaded with errors. I've found so many I've quit counting.

3. The book is nowhere near advanced. Were that not in the title, I guess that would be permissible, but it is, so the book should live up to it.

4. Despite the subtitle on the back of the book, "Practical solutions to common T-SQL problems," the book is about as impractical as they come. Many of the techniques (when they work at all) are not practical in the real world. Handling complex numbers in T-SQL isn't practical, for example, because it's too slow and doesn't correct rounding errors. The authors never mention this.

5. The book is terribly uneven. You can tell multiple people wrote it. You find everything from differing code formatting styles, to different writing styles, to differing opinions on how to address a particular problem. These guys obviously don't know each other well and aren't yet on the same page.

6. Too much similarity to the BOL. There are far too many things that appear far to similar to the BOL. There are tables in the book, for example, that are virtually identical to their BOL counterparts. I didn't buy this book to get a printed version of the BOL. I get the BOL for free with the product and can print it if I want.

7. No originality. There's no technique in this book that I haven't seen in at least one other that predates it.

8. No deep insights. The book is nothing more than a hackneyed collection of code tricks that have appeared elsewhere. I want to know *how* the language works, not just see some code trick that some newsgrouper thought was neato.

9. Too much padding. There's far too much whitespace and padding in this book. Without the strangely formatted source code (which appears to be laid out to use as much page space as possible), the excessive whitespace, pictures, tables, etc., this book would be about half as long as it is. It brings to mind the old Wendy's commerical: "Where's the beef?!"

10. Horrendous organization. The book is all over the place in terms of topics. It makes no sense. It looks like a hodgepodge of things the authors thought might fill a book. It's a shame that such a mess was actually published.

There are some "books" that should not see the light of day. This is one of them. Save your bucks and get a real book.