Customer Reviews

Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2005: T-SQL Querying (Solid Quality Learning)

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This will be a standard book on most DBA's desktops. Itzik Ben-Gan of Solid Quality Learning has taken the Advanced T-SQL course that he teaches and turned it into a fantastic book.

The first two chapters cover the logic of query processing and what physically occurs when you run a query. Very early on Itzik establishes a practice of defining a problem or a question about T-SQL and then spends time working through the solution. This approach carries through the entire book. This not only allows the user to see the problem solving approach in action, but enables the user in pursuing the solutions themselves. Itzik takes the time to lay out a very detailed methodology for identifying and tuning problem queries from the server, through the database, down to the query that's causing the problems. From these foundation chapters he explores topics such as Subqueries and Table Expressions, Joins and Set Operations, Aggregating and Pivoting Data, Top and Apply, Data Modification and finally Graphs, Hierarchies and Recursive Queries.

The greatest thing about the book is that Itzik really explores his solutions. He walks the user into a mind set that accepts only set based operations as the norm for data access. He shows multiple solutions to many of the problems and outlines where and how those solutions differ. This book acts as a good mechanism for actually learning the details of how to use T-SQL withing SQL Server 2005. He also points out where there are differences from 2000 and supplies 2000 only solutions to a lot of the problems, which can help those that need to maintain two code bases. He regularly uses and addresses 2005 functionality so there is zero indications of this being a 2000 book warmed over for re-publication.

Make no mistakes here. This is a high-end book. If you're just getting started in T-SQL, you may want to start out somewhere else. If, after getting down the concepts of SELECT.. FROM... WHERE... GROUP BY... ORDER BY, etc., then come back here and learn what happens and the right reasons to do the right things with the scripts that you write.

I work primarily as a database developer, doing database design from logical models and business requirements and then developing stored procedures, etc., for accessing data from those databases. This kind of information is absolutely vital to doing the best job I can. I think I was predisposed to like this work, but I've actually been picking it up during the day to refer back to points that were unclear to me or that I want to better communicate to others, especially from the first two chapters.

As someone quite familiar with Itzik Ben-Gan's work, I expected this to be a really good book. But since I've been reading about and working with SQL Server 2005 since early betas, I didn't expect to learn much. I was, as it turned out, wrong on both counts.

This book surpassed all of my expectations. It's more than just a really good book -- it's a great book -- and I learned quite a bit from reading it. Itzik and his co-authors have a knack for explaining every idea, down to the minute details that you might miss in other books or documentation. The examples are clear and precise, and the author team has done a great job of making even complex topics crystal clear.

This is certainly not a book for beginners; intermediate and advanced practitioners will want to use this book to help get more out of SQL Server. Learn the basics of T-SQL and SQL Server before tackling this one if you want to take full advantage of what it has to offer.

I strongly recommend this book to anyone wanting a better understanding of SQL server 2005. I have read several books in this series, they are all good, but this is the best by far. It starts by discussing the logical processing of query, which is very important for understand how to write effective queries. It then discusses how to evaluate your queries, it discusses indexes in extensive detail - to the point that you will understand how to they work and how to make effective indexes. It explains many of the new T-SQL features, and how to use them in real life scenarios. However, note that this is not a T-SQL reference guide. Books online serves that purpose. This is a MUST HAVE for my team.

The MS SQL books have dramatically risen in quality in a few short years. When SQL 7 and 2000 were released, there were may be 1-3 book which were truly outstanding. For SQL 2005, however, there are at least 5-10 books which are truly worthwhile and this is one of them.

The reason why the quality of books has risen is the expertise of the authors. For this book, the authors are either MS SQL MVP or have been involved with the creation of MS SQL at Microsoft.

Generally speaking, the book has high level expert description of the underlying MS SQL 2005 architecture and T-SQL commands. But it lacks a nice flowing writing style which hempers the understanding to a willing reader. This book is an another example of authors who are inept at explaining the subject matter which they are an expert much like a professor who can't teach.

I also felt some parts of the book were sloppy or not as detailed. For example, the authors state that one of the steps of T-SQL query tuning is the need to correlate wait stats with problematic queries. Yet they never provide an adequate example (other than providing a useless query of SYS.DM_OS_PERFORMANCE_COUNTERS table) of how to connect wait stat with a specific transaction. This is a huge missing link.

PROS:
1)Awesome details on Indexes and Query plans
2)Solid advice on how to improve T-SQL for better performance.

Cons:
1)Not for the beginners. The book goes straight to the harder subjects (PIVOT, APPLY, complex joins etc).
2)Does not cover simple or fundamental subject matters.

Real quick:

1. Target reader: someone with a good grasp of the 2000 Server wishing to learn the new stuff that came with the 2005 server (there's a lot: the 2005 product is _much_ better than the previous). This is probably the only thing that's unequivocally good about this book.

2. Content: Mostly about tables (joins, logical operations, physical operations, aggregates, a bit of esoterica -- puzzles, hierarchies, stuff like that, just a bit at the end). No CLR to speak of in this volume (there's a tiny bit in the secton on user-defined aggregates; much more of it in the other volume, Programming). This book _should_ be considered the first volume of the two-volume set. If you get this one, you'll get the other one too; neither tome is self-sufficient; in fact there's a lot of explicit interdependence.

3. Very clean technically: technical editing very good (no typos either).

4. Depth vs breadth: the book is more extensive than deep. Some people here say it's difficult -- and it is true, which unfortunately brings me to the next point:

5. Writing: ABHORRENT. That's why it seems difficult -- and it very much is, except it's not due to any kind of inherent difficulty of the subject matter. It's the authors' complete, laughable inability to use the English language to explain things that makes reading this book such a chore. There is also conceptual muddle (people write as they think).

Now, experience taught me to forgive literary incapacity to a _technical_ author (to a degree; and I do take notice and, if possible, avoid him in the future). In cases like that I put the blame squarely on the publisher, especially if otherwise I know the publisher to be solid. The book's front matter lists Roger Leblanc as the copy editor of this book: Roger Leblanc, you get an F; as a man of honour you gotta kill yourself now. The book is full of unimaginable, fantastic garbage of every possible kind, from a massive amount of grating usage errors to a pervasive lack of unity, coherence, and logical connectedness on the page/paragraph level, to a frequent lack of the overall unity: it's clear that an editor never touched it. When I bought this book and read the first chapter I was so p-off I almost sent it back (I got as far as getting an RMA from Amazon). I did keep it though.

Do I recommend this book? It has been useful to me, so -- with great reservation, and only to the right reader -- yes, kinda. And please check out what else is available (there's tons of books on the 2005 server these days). The Querying book is part of the three-volume update and extension of the server-2000 version by Delaney. Delaney's server-2000 book was extremely useful and quite decently written. I wish they let her write the new version, even though it's now three moderately sized books instead of a single huge one, and it's probably difficult for one person to do it all.

This is the 2nd book of the 4 part "Inside-SQL" series, with each book I imagine, appealing to a different reader. Having a programming background, I enjoyed this book more than the first in the series ("The Storage Engine"), which on it's own is also an excellent book.

As mentioned in other reviews, this book is definitely not for beginners. The authors assumes a basic level of SQL knowledge from the reader as he launches into complex Transact-SQL examples - unlike most books which start the reader with simple SQL examples and progress through to complex ones.

While reading this book, it was easy to compare it's contents with Ken Henderson's popular "A Guru's Guide to Transact-SQL", with the latter book becoming more and more outdated by the improvements in Transact-SQL since it was published. If you're a fan of Henderson, you will quickly become a fan of Itzik.

A benefit of this book is that unlike most SQL 2005 books, this is not an update on SQL 2000 material, but instead starts at the 2005 level. The author focuses on the new syntax introduced in SQL 2005, and then, moves onto older SQL 2000 syntax and compares both the complexity and the performance differences between the two. This itself is invaluable to those of use that code in Transact-SQL and feel more comfortable using the "old ways". This book highlights how the new syntax is in fact simpler and more efficient - we just need to take the time and effort to understand and become familiar with the new language changes.

The book starts by discussing the logical processing of a SELECT statement, which helps the reader to understand the hows and whys of writing a query. I finally understood why I can't use an expression's alias in a WHERE BY or GROUP BY clause (as the SELECT line is one of the last parts of the statement to be processed). Throughout the book, the author often defines a problem and allows the reader to formulate an appropriate solution. He then reveals MULTIPLE solutions and explains why each is good or bad. The book ends with a selection of "logic puzzles" that test the reader's ability to solve logical problems. This was both fun and informative.

After reading this book, I found myself changing the way I constructed SQL queries at work - for the better!

I was searching for a book that would fully cover both old and new (2005) features of T-SQL. This is the only one in the market that is actually doing so. But, more then that, the first chapter alone that explains how SQL works logically in human coherent language is worth the price of the whole book. And the other chapters are of same excelent quality. This is the best book about the subject in the market and I am sure to buy the sequel (about T-SQL programming.)
ZA

More so than any other language I can think of SQL is so approachable because it is so logical. Most people can grasp the basics within hours if not minutes. Unfortunately this approachability is often confused with simplicity. Learning SQL may be easy but becoming proficient takes time and guidance. Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2005: TSQL Querying, part 1 of the 2 part series (Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2005: TSQL Programming) is so much more than examples of what to do and what not to do. Itzik Ben-Gan takes you behind the editor and inside the engine to teach you the how's and why's. I recently had the good fortune to attend a course given by Itzik Ben-Gan who is a passionate instructor and a recognized expert. Whether it is listening to him speak, reading his articles in SQL Server magazine or reading this fantastic book there is no one more capable to help you hone your SQL skills.

There are occassions when I like to believe that I can write really smart SQL queries. Then I see the stuff that Itzik Ben-Gan and Steve Kass (the Tecknial Rewiwer of this book) come up with, and I crawl back under my rock.

So if you want a book about advanced SQL Server querying and programming, there is little reason to search further. No one knows this topic better than Itzik. (As for T-SQL Programming there is a second book. Itzik and the publishers felt that it was too much for one book. So there are two. Querying is part one, Programming is part two.)

Of course you may ask: "OK, he knows the tecknical stuff, but is he a good author than can explain for the common man?". Being an SQL Server MVP myself, and thus considered an expert myself, this is somewhat difficult to assess. I do get the feeling in some places that he should explain a little more in depth. Not because I don't understand myself, I do. (Except in a few places where I just look and say "what?") But sometimes I suspect that more regular folks would benefit from more detailed explanations. Then again, this means that instead of reading the book once, you will have to read it twice.

Whatever, keep it as a reference. What is really valuable with the book is that you get cookbook recipes for problems that are not entirely trival to handle in SQL: Median, trees and graphs, custom aggregations etc. And you don't get one solution, you get a couple, since depending on the situation, different solutions work best. You will find, though, that you usually end up using the row_number() function. :-)

But as you may guess: this is not a book for beginners. If you are a habitual Oracle or DB2 programmer about to set your foot for the first time in SQL Server land, don't worry. This is the book for you. But if you are new to SQL programming, this is not the book for you, not yet.

Having read Itzik Ben-Gan's articles in SQL Server Magazine for several years, I was expecting a well written and technically challenging book. All I can say now that I have been reading it is: "Wow!" It has really exceeded my expectations. I tire of the typical re-hash of the SQL Server Books Online that most authors are fond of doing lately, but this text digs far deeper and points out several items that can help any SQL Server professional build a more solid foundation in the art of T-SQL querying. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in a more thorough understanding of how SQL Server 2005 handles query processing.