Customer Reviews

MCSE: SQL Server 2000 Design Study Guide (Exam 70-229)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Good book, but certainly not the best book SYBEX has produced. I used SYBEX books for all 6 exams for MCSE WinNT, and passed all 6 the first time. Now I am pursuing MCDBA SQL 2000 certification. I used SYNGRESS to study for exam 70-228 "SQL Admin" and passed, however due to the unavailablility of a SYNGRESS book for 70-229 "SQL Design" I bought this SYBEX book AND FAILED THE EXAM.

The book lacks enough 'hands on' excersizes, particularly regarding using views, stored procedures, and user-defined functions. Also, as you read through the book you can 'feel' it was co-authored. Much of the book is somewhat hard to read, but the chapters on Accessing, Inserting, and Updating Data are very easy to read with many hands-on exercizes. The chapter reviews are pretty useless for actually 'reviewing' the material, as it really only lists the topics covered and provides very little summary information of what was actually covered in the chapter. SYNGRESS books provide an excellent "2 minute drill" at the end of each chapter to review the details, but this SYBEX book does not contain any such tool.

The SYNGESS/Osborne book for MCDBA exam 70-229 "SQL Design" is due out in November, and I would recommend considering the SYNGRESS book before this SYBEX book.

Let me just get it out of the way by mentioning first that this book contains many errors - perhaps more than an average technical book. However, most are typographical and do not degrade the value of the book that much.

Having said that, the coverage of all the exam topics in this book is nothing short of superb! The explanations are detailed, clear and with numerous examples. For the purposes of the exam, I would go as far as to say that you may not need any other supplemental material (which is very rare for a study guide)!

This book covered all but 2 questions on my 70-229 exam. One of them was regarding the full syntax of OPENXML and the other was regarding Replication.

The questions at the end of the chapters are very similar to those on the test (again, rare for a study guide). If you can answer most of those questions correctly, you will do well on the real exam.

All in all, in my opinion, this is the best book out there for the 70-229 exam.

I have used MOC (The first mistake), and MSPRESS (Another mistake), then QUE (I think this book needs serious revamp) only to find out all of them do not cover what you need to know for the exam, until I came across this book. It explains concepts for 70-229 very well. It has a lot of exercises that reinforce the concepts. I gave three stars because there are still many typos and review questions with wrong answers.

This is a good book which has comprehensive coervage of most of the exam objectives and also important concepts not required by the exam, like extent, page and physical storage of records. There is one chapter devoted to index storage, statistics and fragmentation with some under the hood information. I passed the exam the second time but I don't blame it on the book. Most of the exam questions are case-scenario based and no book will ever cover every possible case. Understanding business logic and creating logical models is a matter of experience and common sense rather than mouth-fed knowledge from books. This book does have its drawbacks. The book must be hastily published and there are numerous mistakes. The proof-reading job was donely poorly. One should go to Sybex's web site to find the correction to these errors. The CD includes two bonus exams in addition to those already in the book. The layout of the options in a question is the worst I have seen. When the options are long, each option is contained in a two line scrollable box. It is impossible to compare one option from the next.
The parts that are not adquately covered include Index Tuning Wizard and using SQL Profiler to create traces, the latter is tested in greater depth in 70-228. On the whole this is a great book for anyone who wants to learn SQL Server 2000 and is recommended as the principal material for the exam. I would give it 4 and a half stars.

This is an excellent book written at the "professional beginner" level discussing issues of database design and planning with SQL server 2000. Excellent design and configuration tips, Good explanations of difficult concepts, however, the practice tests are somewhat lacking, and while it covers all of the relevant material, the book fails somewhat as a study aid specifically for the 70-229 exam, where many other Sybex books excel. The book is well worth the money as a useful tool for a relatively new SQL 2000 DBA, however, don't rely on it too heavily for the test.

I used this book to prepare for exam that I successfully passed. My overall impression from the book is very positive. It is well-structured; all explanations are clear and concise. It is strongly focused at exam and doesn't spend your time on irrelevant topics. I think it covers not less than 90% of what you need for exam. I recommend reading it along with enquiring Books Online.

However it has noticeable amount of typos. Most of them are quite obvious, but I can recall at least a couple of typos that really made me confused.

The companion CD is much worse. I expected the tests from CD to be a real help, but their format made them very inconvenient to use. Moreover, some test questions seemed to be corrupted. Honestly I think the CD is nearly useless.

SUMMARY: this book is not ideal; however it can be certainly used to prepare for the exam.

I originally graded this a 3, but the more I read into the book, the worse it gets and the more frustrating for me it becomes. The problem isn't that it's too complicated or moves too quickly. The book travels at a nice pace and explains a lot of useful details. The probem is that there are too many errors all over the book. Before you finish the second chapter, you will have noticed over 2 dozen anomalies. Some of them are minor typos that you can easily ignore. But most of them are errors in the syntax part of the writing and inconsistencies in the concept explanations. Lots of small errors during crucial sections (such as forgetting a 'not' or saying it CAN instead of it CAN'T) throw the meaning totally off. The more errors I discovered the less faith I had in the authors and the more frustrating the experience became. Only when the same information is repeated 2-3 times and explained in depth can I feel sure about the material. But because of all the errors, when the authors only state a certain concept once, I don't feel like I can trust them. Occasionally, some of the review questions give the wrong answers too. The authors and editors (if there happened to be any at all) should feel ashamed for releasing such a poor quality book. To top it off, the code on the CD is pathetic, as mentioned by other people. C'mon guys, this is supposed to be a tech book.. Is it too much to ask to have error free writing during the SYNTAX part, correct information about the MAIN concepts and a CD that works??

If you are totally lost and do not know where to start when studying for 229, this book is a good place to start. However, there are many holes in the book that you need to be aware of. Supplement this with reading of BOL or taking the Transcenders. If you rely totally on this book, you would be in for a shock in the exam. It covers at best 80% of the material.

Hello everybody,
I bought this book after I saw its online review. This book is excellent not only for exam purpose but also for knowledge purppose. I cleared my exam with score of 909 today and I would strongly suggest to read this book

I used this book and transcenders to pass 70-229 on my first try. The book is excellent, however, the exam questions that came with the book won't prepare you for the exam. This book is also a good reference for your daily workings with SQL Server.