Customer Reviews

DB2 9 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows Database Administration Upgrade: Certification Study Guide

5 star:		(1)
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3 star:		(1)
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I bought this book and all the exam questions were came from this book as the Author mentioned at the introduction. I passed the exam with 94%.

I suppose the book comes as described. It covers new material for the DBA upgrade exam. I had hoped that it would cover more things that had been introduced since the V8 book came out.

The content that is there is good, and explains topics clearly. I was just expecting a bit more content for the price.

So, today I easily passed the 736 exam (building on the 700/701 I got 7 years before) using this book as a guide. I conclude that the book is a WIN in preparing for the exam. However note that I said it is a GUIDE. I had IBM Information Center up on my laptop as I read through, and periodically browsed topics in the Infocenter as they were brought up in the book. I believe that this book by itself may not allow you to pass the 736 exam. You need to aggressively research topics as they are raised in the book using the official docs.

Questions at the end of every chapter were excellent and useful.

Criticisms: the book has quite a few typos which seem to indicate it was rushed through. Too many Control Center GUI screen prints - I don't think the certification exam asks any questions about the Control Center GUI, and I've never worked for a company that used the Control Center or Admin Server (usually because of firewall and subnet restrictions). Not enough explanation of XML, though I aced that part of the test using just the book. I would have liked more of a "XML for Dummies" and a better explanation of XQuery. I don't just want to pass the test, I want to understand XML structure.

Some RECOVER syntax and functionality is not addressed in the book, you should follow up on this in the Information Center. Range-partitioned table management is a far richer topic than how it is handled in the book. Again follow up by reading the many excellent pages on partitioning in the InfoCenter. HADR: if you didn't already know a fair amount about HADR, you would probably be confused by the material in this book. But if you're certified for V8 you should probably know that stuff. Right?

The book is very well written and deals in detail the arguments of the new version of the database.