Customer Reviews

A Developer's Guide to Data Modeling for SQL Server: Covering SQL Server 2005 and 2008

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"A Developers Guide to Data Modeling for SQL Server" is billed to be for all level of data modelling development, however it is written in a style targeted to beginning novice developers only, and never progresses very far beyond demonstrating the fundamentals of Data Modeling. For novices, it is extremely good resource, explaining highly technical concepts in an easy to understand non-technical language. However, for the experienced developer, it would be best to look elsewhere.

I am a medical doctor with a passion for software and a special interest in database technologies. I must say that I am not in the category of beginners in database design and modelling. I have about 6+ years of experience in this. I started reading the first page of this book with a lot of skepticism. In fact I had purchased the book along with 3 others from Amazon and I was not really sure of whether I would like reading it...it appeared very basic to me!
But that was only until I started reading Page 1.... believe me this is no exaggeration... I could not put the book down for an entire 8 hours afterwards! I went to bed at 4 AM after I had finished 3/4ths of this lovely work. This masterpiece of a book is truely the fruit of years of experience and immaculate teaching ability on the part of the authors. I can only say one thing.... anyone even remotely intending to get into database design, modelling and implementation with SQL Server.... should get this book and read it!! Believe me you will love it. It is simply too good to be true....

This book is a timely and helpful overview of the strategic importance of logical and physical data modeling. It also provides some useful insights into new modeling-related features in SQL Server 2008.

While some aspects of the book are likely to be somewhat controversial (e.g., the use of plural entity and table names [I prefer singular; the authors use plural], and the use of views for logical/physical data independence [I agree with the authors on the role and power of views, but some people prefer other abstraction mechanisms]), I believe the book should be required reading for anyone responsible for data modeling and database design aspects of working with SQL Server.