Customer Reviews

MCSE Training Kit (Exam 70-229): Microsoft SQL Server(TM) 2000 Database Design and Implementation (Pro Certification)

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

In response to the other reviews, I do not believe that any one book is going to prepare you for the exam. And this book itself does not claim to. Throughout the text, there are ample references to Kalen Delany's "Inside SQL Server 2000" (A must have for any serious DB Designer/Admin) and to the BOL. If you use the book as it instructs, and you have the requisite experience (as outlined in the "About" section) then you will have learned a great deal and be prepared to pass the exam. If you are just looking for quick exam prep then buy the Troytech or Testkiller cheatsheets, but if you actually want to learn something then get this book and the aformentioned title by Ms. Delany.
Also, the other reviews are correct regarding the "generic" nature of the examples. The idea being to provide the prospective examinee with the fountations of good design and implementation practices. If you've been designing MS SQL solutions than it is an excellent way to review these principles. And if you've never designed MS SQL solutions then it's not a bad place to start.
Follow the instructions and you can't go wrong.

Although this book will probably help get you "ready" for the test (70-229), you will need several other resources to gain a true understanding of the concepts set forth. The excercises are far too general, but the essay type reviews at the end of each chapter are extremely helpful.

I would suggest Professional SQL Server 2000 Programming and SQL Server 2000 Developer's Guide as companions.

I thought was a very good Training Kit for the 224 exam. One of the included CDs had .avi's showing all Practice Exercise's that were very usefully incase you dont have access to test equipment. The book was well written and I did not found any blatant errors. For my test prep, I used this and the Exchange 2000 Resource Kit. The training kit provided a great overall coverage and example exercises. The Resource Kit then was able to pound the deeper more technical aspects into my brain.

Again I will go back to the exercises and .avi's. I personally dont have a cluster server to test on, but the training guide steps you through the install and configure process, while you watch it on video. The book also includes an eval copy of Exchange 2000 Enterprise and Outlook 2000

I recently worked on a Win2K/E2K project for a new n/w of approx 150 Users. My area of specialization is W2K and a work mate was dealing with E2K Side. We were scheduled to go live within 3 weeks when my colleague got faced with major family problems, hence wasn't going to be available for atleast 2 months. I've worked with Exch 5.5 in the past at a very high level, but hadn't dealt with E2K. Being the Head Engineer of the project i was in a fix, my first reaction was to obtain an external contractor, but obtaining an E2K expert was close to impossible. I decided to buy an E2K book, let me tell this book is God sent, I setup a lab as specified in the book and started reading aggressively mainly at night after work. Within 3-4 days i was ready to start the installation. I used the hardware requirement section to allocate the correct RAID drives for Exchange servers, installed Exchange, edited to default recipient policy to assign first.last e-mail addresses (%g.%s@emaildomain.com), created user mailboxes, OWA, Routing Group Connector (btn the 2 sites), public folder replication and even configured an instant Messaging server :-). The ebook installed on my laptop was great for quick references while onsite as i didn't want to carry a training kit to the clients site considering they were paying top dollar for the project. I wrote a detailed disaster recovery document using information in the disaster recovery section.

My value has increased greatly since successfully completing this project, thanks to this book. Am not yet an E2K GURU but it won't be long before I become one. Guys if u plan to deploy E2K make sure this book is part of your collection.

I would not recommend this book to someone who needs a comprehensive textbook or manual for SQL Server. I would recommend it to someone who feel they know SQL Server well and just want to get ready for the exam. It seems to do a pretty good job of identifying the exam objectives and giving you summaries and practice exercises for those subject areas.

If there's a lot of stuff in the book that you don't know - or don't understand - then you probably need to learn more of the basics of SQL Server. Get another book, read Books Online, or maybe take a class. Use this book to identify your weakpoints - and then go from there.

The CD contains a fully-functional 120-day evaluation copy of SQL Server Developer edition that you can install on your PC. This can really help because you need to practice things, and try stuff out in order to do well on the exam. The exam is oriented toward problem-solving, not just regurgitating facts. I don't see how anyone could pass the exam without being able to try things out and practice with it.

Ten mistakes can be found in the book some small and some large like how many stores and storage groups can be found in a 2000 Exchange Server product. Instead of twenty as a total the number given is 96, now thats not just a typo.
Wordy at 1000 pages and skips around way too much.
Read the reference book instead, you will learn more.

Really a poor job, especially for MS Press.

If your goal is to obtain MCSE 2000 certification as soon as possible, then getting this book to tackle 70-219 should be an optimal choice.

Or, if you have passed the 70-217 test and would like to find a concise yet comprehensive study guide to prepare/pass 70-219 in very short time (say 7 days), I suggest you check out this book.

Because of higher price set by Microsoft Press, I had never read any of its publications for preparing my MCSE tests. But, I couldn't find appropriate book for 70-219 until I read one of the reviews about this book in this web page and decided to give it a try. I would say the result is beyond my expectation.

The author does a good job by organizing what you need to pay attention in 5 short chapters. The subjects -- forest plan, domain plan, organization unit plan, site topology plan, migration plan -- and the styles presented by the author match nicely with what Microsoft tests about in 70-219.

In fact, if you can jump over some of the irrelevant or less important pages, this can be a five star summary guide better than some of the Exam Cram series.

Here are a couple of tips that may help you to further cut your study time:

1. Skip Chapter 1 and Chapter 2: it will save you nearly 90 pages reading time without negative impacts on the real test scores.

2. From Chapter 3 on, read each "Lesson" section thoroughly but skip "Activity" and "Lab" sections altogether. It would be quite efficient if you read every word in each "Lesson" and get solid understanding about the "reasons and advantages for choosing certain design strategy" and then supplemented with close-to-real test questions compiled by Tran___der.

Overall, since the threshold for passing 70-219 is not high, you might easily overkill it by relying on this book alone.

This book is supposed to prepare you for the 70-229 exam. It fails on almost every level, the questions at the end of each chapter are nothing like test questions. You'd be infinately better prepared if you read the sql server books online. Not only are they free, but they include the information you'll need to pass the exam.

If you want this book as resource to learn SQL Server 2000 i'd tell you to look elsewhere. SAMS 'Microsoft SQL Server 2000 unleashed' title is far more comprehensive.

In summary, i'd avoid this book like the plague. I had to read it because my training school required me to and I regret the wasted time. My time would have been much better spent reading through the books online.

I am surprised that with the very poor quality of 70-220 study guides on the market, more people have not used and reviewed this book. While Im not a huge fan of Microsoft training kits as exam study guides, I usually do buy them for reference along with an ExamCram. This training kit does a good job of covering the subject of Win2K security. Unlike MCSE study guides, the goal of the Microsoft Training Kit is not solely to help you pass the test. The goal is to teach how to design and implement Win2K security, and gain hands on experience by doing the lab exercises. As a result the book does go into detail well beyond what is needed to pass the test. However, someone with previous experience taking Microsoft tests will concentrate on the concepts and not get bogged down in the detail.

I used the Microsoft 70-220 Training Kit to learn the material and the Readiness Review to study for, and pass the 70-220 exam. I recommend both of these books

I used this book for my main study guide for the exam, supplemented with other text and my own four years of Exchange experience. I expected it to be fairly concise and in depth, based on other recent MS training kits. Someone dropped the ball here, though, by publishing this.

Exchange is a vast piece of software, and this book seems to reflect that at first glance. As I read it and went through the many, many hands-on exercises, I noticed a trend: tedious, intricate steps for the hands-on stuff, but very little technical depth anywhere, certainly not enough to pass the exam. All too often, important concepts are given a short paragraph or a couple of pages, written in a cluttered tone, and then a long, long step-by-step excercise that shows you what to do but rarely why you are doing it, something you need to know for the exam. I kept wondering which thing Kay Unkroth didn't understand: her audience, or her subject?

This book does a good job in one respect: it gives an introduction to the material for the exam. They should cut much of the fluff and add detail for the next edition if they want to make this worth the money.