Customer Reviews

Code Centric: T-SQL Programming with Stored Procedures and Triggers

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is quite easily the worst technical book I've ever even begun to read. "5000 lines" of source code? Only if you count gratuitous use of space-filling comments - in many examples there are more comments than code. Real-world code? Is "real-world" a synonym for "buggy"? Easily 25% of the code samples have bugs that will prevent them from running on any version of SQL Server.

And the worst part of it all is that the book is written so poorly. Mr. Wells should definitely keep his day job.

I was excited when I got this book, but steadily more disappointed as I began to read it. After reading the first chapter or two, I started counting the coding errors and typing mistakes. I was up to 23 when I stopped. A lot of the code in this book simply won't run. What does is too simplistic to really be useful.

This book introduced me to several aspects of T-SQL that many other books did not. It's dog eared and carried by me every day. It does have some technical errors but to me they were passable; that is what the website is for. (Any book produced about a technical subject that is error free will be the Holy Grail.)

The book covers primarily T-SQL and the methods of programming it. It is not meant as a primer for accessing T-SQL through ADO or DMO. The best way to access the code is through SQL's Query Analyzer, hands down. It gives an excellent introduction to the meaning behind T-SQL, including stored procedures, triggers, creating and altering all of the above. It also gives a good breakdown on the differences between MS SQL 7 and MS SQL 2000. (I believe that a good reason I didn't have the technical problems mentioned elsewhere is that this book is aimed primarily at SQL 2000 and I used it for SQL 7 so I examined everything carefully to ensure it used nothing SQL2K specific.)

I believe this book is one of a very few that cover T-SQL in any depth. It came highly recommended to me and I pass that recommendation to you. Garth does have the ability to explain technical subjects in an easy to follow format and that ability is well used in this book.

This book is full of well documented code samples that clearly explain concepts presented in the book. The author provides different levels of code which allow beginners to gain proficiency and experienced developers to learn alternative approaches to solve problems. There is a real focus on using Transact-SQL as a programming language to solve real-world problems.

I urge you to visit the web site for the book (SQLBook.com) and download the sample chapters. That will give you a good idea of the book's content and level of detail. You can also look through the table of contents. I found Code Centric to be helpful and informative.

Not very impressed with this book. Almost everything in it is from somewhere else. Also, many of the techniques recommended are quite dated. Many don't even apply to SS2K. In fact, SS2K coverage is all but missing from this book. On top of this, there are numerous errors and typos. So, you have an unoriginal SQL Server book that's loaded with errors, quite dated, and lacks coverage of the most recent release of the product - not worth your money in my opinion.

Garath Wells book is a unique guidance to T-SQL programming.

In "easy to read terms" the book explains working with T-SQL and gives you the basic skills to write effective Stored Procedures and triggers.

The book gives many, easy to understand examples that help you build your own code. I often use the book as a T-SQL-manual. Many of my existing SQL server applications has now been tuned to run mush faster with less code thanks to the skills I developed though this book.

If you are new to Stored Procedures or just want to learn more - don't hesitate to buy "Code-Centric: T-SQL Programming with Stored Procedures and Triggers"

I'm not sure what the goal with this book was, but it fails to deliver on anything positive. First, the coverage of the language as a whole is really weak. Whole subjects are completely glossed over. Moreover, if you're an advanced coder, you won't find anything you don't already know in this book. it's really for begginner's only, but as I've said, the beginner type coverage is really lacking. Worse yet, many of the examples are incomplete, tediously long (useless comments abound), and impractical. If you're looking for a good T-SQL book, keep looking.

I compared this book with several others & it stands head and shoulders above them. The extensive coding provides examples that not only explain "how-to" for those familiar with T-SQL, but also provide "Oh, you can do THAT?" types of functionality for those becoming familiar with the language.

This probably shouldn't be the first book in one's SQL reference library as not all the material would be appropriate for beginners ... but if your interests/work take you onto the programming side, this is a must-have.

I love this book because it's not so much about theory (leave that in college or for newbies) it's more about how to apply code to real-world problems. something that I find hard to find. :-)

like it.

No sense repeating what's been said; read the other reviews to
find out what the book covers. One of the benefits I got out of
using Garth's book is that it's organized in a manner that helps
me be more productive. When using it as a reference, info is easy
to find, and the code samples are not all trivial as in many
other books. Therefore, one can derive new solutions to issues
not covered in the book. My copy has been loaned to three others,
and is dogeared from use.
This one stays in the toolbox.