Customer Reviews

A Developer's Guide to SQL Server 2005

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

 

 

I feel cheated by the publishers of this book, because it was described as a "Bible" for SQL Server 2005: a "definitive hands-on guide" with "virtually every key concept" explained. It does not fit such a description, unless one's idea of a "Bible" can leave out Genesis, Exodus and the rest of the Old Testament.

Beauchemin's and Sullivan's book is a competent rendition of new features in SQL Server 2005, but in order to use it one will have to be thoroughly familiar with previous editions of the database product. Beauchemin and Sullivan fail to provide a first-principles description of SQL Server 2005 capabilities and syntax. Anyone hoping to use this book as a reference will probably be as disappointed in it as I have been.

Covers writing T-SQL and C# code to be executed/hosted within SQL Server. The authors point out many of the new features of SQL Server 2005.

I found the writing style somewhat disjointed. I just couldn't read it from cover to cover. It reads like a course syllabus. It doesn't really fall into the category of a reference either.

Make sure you skim through this book at your local bookstore before you commit to purchasing it.

Bob's book is written for the passionate Microsoft developer. DBA's and IT Pro's will find this book useful to have on the shelf, as there are number of features that touch the life of the Admin. Additionally, AW press has released another book, SQL Server 2005 Distilled, if you are looking for something less deep, I would try that book too.
HTH.
Dusty...

This book was recomended by my instructor and I see myself keeping this as a ready reference once I get into the work force.

As other reviewers have stated, there is good coverage of topics overall and in new topics in particular. The sentence structure and overall material arrangement are, however, suboptimal. I have used this text as a survey of new features and to get a view of the SQL Server development landscape. I would not recommend any heavy lifting with this text. I would recommend the Inside Series for that.

This is a very good book for Database Developers. It covers most topics thoroughly. Some topics like SQLCLR and XQuery are covered too much in detail for my taste, but who knows one day I might need it! (there is a 17 page WSDL in chapter 12 .. I don't know who decided to put this in :-) Initially the minutiae kind of put me off, but over time I have started to like this book.

This is THE book on SQL Server 2005 development.

I first got to know the authors through the beta of this book, "A First Look at SQL Server for Developers" - which quickly became the De facto standard. This is the RTM version of that book.

If you purchased all the books on this topic, some would be on your bookshelf, and one would be on your desk. This is the one which would be on your desk. The authors are experts, and the book is very well written. It is simply the best book on the topic that exists. Much like Michael Kay's XSLT book.

If you want the details of SQL Server 2005 application development done right, this is the book. Bob covers .NET integration, security and a ton of other new features. Bob's first edition of this book came out 2 years ago. That shows you the guy is ahead of the game. He now partners with Kimberly Tripp who is one of the top SQL Server performance people. Check out Bob's recent interview on dotnetrocks.com and you will know the guy knows SQL Server 2005.
Chris Dickey
[...]

There is a heck of a lot stuffed between the covers of this book. It shows improvements on many fronts to SQL Server. Quite possibly, any given reader won't need every new feature, or even most. But Microsoft clearly hopes that the broad sweep will have broad appeal to developers.

On one front, there is integration with Web Services. So that in SQLCLR, you can invoke a Web Service. To this ends, the text has a quick explanation of Web Services Description Language, and how various utilities are offered, to make stubs or proxies. It may be worth noting that a proxy can be implemented as synchronous or asynchronous. Why is this significant? Some of you might have written client-server code using Sun's Remote Procedure Calls. By default, these used to be synchronous. Which led to very brittle code. A client could hang, waiting for a tardy server to respond. In SQL Server, you might want to consider favouring asynchronous methods, which can give more robust, loosely-coupled systems.

There is an extensive discussion of how the entire rubric of Web Services can be deeply integrated with the SQL Server. Impressive. Though some readers might wonder if this seems to be a 2 tier implementation, rather than the common 3 tiers often promulgated in this business. Well, a 2 tier system can be more responsive and scale better than a 3 tier. With the drawback that since your business logic is embedded in the database, you are tied to that database. But if you are already a SQL Server house, and have no plans to migrate, then this should not be a problem.

Of course, the book talks about much else. But it was the Web Services that caught my eye.

You really need some time to go over this book. At times, the content in the book goes a little heavy but the information is very useful and every sentence in the book has useful information that you want to capture in your brain. So, read this book slowly and carefully to absorb most of it.