Customer Reviews

Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2005: The Storage Engine (Solid Quality Learning)

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Most SQL Server DBA's I know who have been working on SQL Server 7 or 2000 for any length of time usually have a copy of Kalen Delaney's "Inside SQL Server" sitting on their desk. For SQL Server 2005, that book has been split into four different books and it looks like all them are going to be must-have's occupying large swaths of book-shelf space across the planet. Because, the fact of the matter is, if you want to know the internals of the new database engine, this is your source.

Comparisons between this new book and the previous books in the series seem inevitable. From that type of comparison, I think that this book comes off very well. Removing the TSQL processing and other aspects of development from the book allows Delaney to drill down into every aspect of how the server works. She takes a very structured approach, showing how to install SQL Server before moving on to the Server Architecture and Configuration chapters. She covers database and database files, logging and recovery, tables, indexes, and locking, each in separate chapters, each in a great degree of detail. She takes the time between explaining how things work to suggest best practices for configuration and usage along the way. Scattered throughout are also Tip's & Notes that suggest alternatives to the topic under discussion or implications of the usage of a particular topic.

This is not a book from which you can easily learn basic SQL Server skills. So much time is spent on so much detail, invaluable detail for the experienced user, that the novice might get stuck in the mire. I personally don't find that to be an actual detraction from the book. In fact, I'd recommend that if you're just learning SQL Server 2005, you pick this book up in addition to some other, more general, tome, because from here you can learn the why's and wherefore's of what you're trying to do.

The Forward to the book says one of the most important things about this book and it bears repeating, "This is not a revision of the previous book. So much has changed and there are so many new features that Kalen had to write a brand new book." Reading through this book, that becomes clear on every single page. Nothing appears to have been regurgitated from the previous books, but each and every screen shot, description and code example is written for 2005.

This book is perhaps the best book out there for understanding SQL 2005 architecture. I know of no other book which offers such advanced understanding of how SQL 2005 stores, retrives, and manages data.

Indeed, the author is a MS SQL MVP and has written with the collaboration of those who wrote the code for MS SQL 2005 at Microsoft.

The author's explaination, however, could be a lot better. For example, here is an exerpt on the author's explaination of IAM (Index Allocation Map):

"An IAM page contains a page header; an IAM page header, which contains eight page pointer slots; and a set of bits that map a range of extents on a file, which doesn't neccessarily have to be the same file that IAM page is in. The header has address of first extent in the range mapped by the IAM. The eight page pointer slots might contain pointers to pages belonging to the relevant object contained in mixed extents; only the first IAM for an object has values in these pointers."

Now, I have worked with databases for over a decade and have good understanding of Indexes and its structure, and I still did not understand what the author was talking about on some sentences.

Pros:
1)Explains data and index storage structures (Page, extents, B-Tree, Keys etc) and how they are managed in transactions (update, delete, insert) better than any book I know.
2)Relatively short book (400 pages) which does not waste words or sentences to make it a thicker book (common practice to write a thicker book for a higher price).

Cons:
1)Tries to combine MS SQL 101 topics (What is Master, MSDB, TEMP, and MODEL db?) with expert subject matter (What is IAM, Cluster Keys, RID, etc).
2)Writing is sometimes indecipherable.
3)Mostly not for the beginners (despite its rudimentrary coverage of the basics).

I'm stingy with reviews, but once again, Kalen's book is a winner and this is one of the few great books on SQL Server. Her writing style is clear and she gets right to the details. Every book serves a specific need. If you need to understand the SQL Server engine, then this is the best book for that purpose. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. Thanks, Kalen!

This is a good book, I did learn a few new things to help me better understand SQL Server 2005. However, I strongly recommend the T-SQL Querying book of this series over this one. Though the titles suggest different coverage, my opinion is that the T-SQL Querying book gave much better insight in the physical structure of indexes. Though the book was not that bad, it did not provide the detailed coverage of 'storage engine' topics I had expected.

I've been following this series since the days of Ron Soukup, and Delaney once again does not fail to deliver and impress in this latest edition.

This book is part of a four part volume set (the 4th still awaiting publication at the time of this review), which previous to this release was contained in one volume. This shows how much more information is being published on SQL Server 2005, and gives Delaney the opportunity to focus on select topics and go into far more detail when covering them.

This book contains a perfect balance of material appropriate for the topics being discussed: (configuring SQL Server, logical table and log structures, internal file structures and management, the many available locking mechanisms). For topics not relevant to content of this book, Delaney frequently refers to the other books within this series and in particular the book on query tuning and optimization she is still working on.

Having now read a few volumes on SQL 2005, I can confidently state that Delaney does not waste pages regurgitating material that's either unrelated or unnecessary to the topic being discussed, but instead I found her insights and knowledge transfer unique to this book and worth the time learning.

Overall, I would highly recommend this book to anyone seriously wanting to learn SQL Server 2005 at a higher than basic level. You will not be disappointed.

NB. My only negative on this book is that it begins with 3 pages of acknowledgements listing technical colleagues, editors, friends etc that helped refine the book to what it is, but just within the first few pages there is an "xxx" placeholder in the text that hasn't been updated, a reference to a companion CD that was dropped from publication plus other technically incorrect statements. In fact, there are so many editorial errors throughout the book that there is a significant page on www.insidesqlserver.com dedicated to documenting the corrections. All books contain errors, but it was just painful to see so many after reading through the myriad of people that helped "perfect" this book. On a positive note, kudos to the author for acknowledging the problems and publishing the corrections.

I read the book and found it is well written and contains lots of information. May be some not need it, but to be good SQL Server DBA I think it is necessary to understand internal work of SQL Server, and the book is one of books which give knowledge, in good and well written style, about internal work of SQL Server

Okay, reviewing this book is going to be quite difficult. I have mixed feelings however everything that I have to say about this book is positive. For one, this is not for the faint of heart of casual reading. This book is there for those who want to learn the gory details of how SQL 2005 works.

I would describe the book like this:
You have a car and it is nice and pretty on the outside, and you can do all sorts of cool things with the buttons on the console and you can play music and other nifty things, such as GPS. Well, on the inside of the car you have no clue how it all ties together and what is going on when you push that button.

Well, imagine this book as a blueprint of how your car's innards work, down to the very last oil spot on the engine.

This book is the best down right down to the memory block detailed book I have seen on SQL 2005. Now, the hard part about this book is that it can be difficult to read, and follow, at times. There are several sections you may have to read over and over again just to start to understand what it even means.

If you are looking for a good hard core book on the SQL engine, this is it for you. I give this book a 5 star rating for content, author knowledge and sheer impressive information.

Great book. Very informative and in depth, especially if you are looking for not only logical database structure but actual physical information. This book covers exactly what it's title states, the sql server 2005 storage engine.

I read one of the reviews that said that they didn't like the book, thought it wasn't organized well - bah. Perhaps I'm biased since I've basically "grown up" with Kalen teaching me the internals (she and Ron Soukop). She's got an amazing brain, does a great job making the complex topics simple to understand and, if you read even half of this book, you'll know more about SQL Server than 90% of the other folks out there. I would also suggest Ken Henderson's book on internals: The Guru's Guide to SQL Server Architecture and Internals

This is a well written book that contains plenty of insight into how SQL Server works.