Customer Reviews

MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-433): Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 Database Development

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I purchased this book as soon as it was released, and used it as my exclusive study material for the exam. I took my exam today and passed by a healthy margin. Although I use SQL Server on a daily basis at my job, much of the content of the exam goes beyond my typical day-to-day development tasks, and I don't believe I would have passed the exam had I not used this material to prepare for it.

The only bad thing I have to say about this book involves the Practice Tests provided on the CD. Very frequently, questions would deal with topics that simply were not covered in the book itself. Typically the questions would ask for highly specific syntax to perform fairly obscure tasks. The questions direct you to the chapter and section of the book where the topic is covered, but it was very common for me to find no reference at all to a question's topic when I referred to that section (or when I search the PDF version of the book.) The good news is that each test question, and its answers, are fully explained. But the bad news is that I felt like the practice questions were testing me on materials that simply weren't discussed in the book. This made me feel unprepared for the exam, and it made me question whether the book was incomplete, or if the practice questions were actually beyond the scope of the exam.

In the end, the actual exam had none of the obscure questions I had grown used to seeing on the practice exams, and I believe that every question on the exam itself was covered adequately in the book. So if you're studying for this exam, and you feel like the practice tests are causing you to reconsider taking it, you should probably give the exam a shot. I got a 10% better score on the actual exam than I did on the best practice test I took from the CD.

This rather dull and pedantic book nominally covers the exam material, but the book's organization and samples are far less detailed than the usual Microsoft Press books. Also, the writing was so poor I gave up about half way through and instead bought the 70-433 Transcender exam. The Transcender exam has far better examples and explanations as well as instant feedback.
Don't waste your money with this book. Instead, spend another $30 and get the Transcender product and you'll do just fine on the exam.

Ben H.
MCSD
MCDBA
MCSD.NET

The book:

Great book, covers all of the exam topics very well and in a concise manner. You'll learn everything you need to know by doing the practice lessons that are at the end of every chapter. Even if you're not writing the exam, this book would be great for someone wanting to learn about SQL 2008 changes on the developer level. Highly recommended!

The practice exams that are included:

Are horrible for the most part. Many of the questions are overly complex and some make no sense. For example, to have a persisted view, what SET options have to be set to on. Choose all that apply (from a list of 10 or so possible answers)...nobody with a life is going to know that or even need to know it. Also some of the answers are quite wrong, tried a few of the queries and they failed, even though they were marked as right. I honestly wouldn't even use the practice exams and instead use MeasureUp or SelfTestSoftware.

In summary, the book is great, I went over the book for about a month and a half, and combined with my experience I scored 100% on the exam.

FWIW, I passed the test with this book and it's practice exam as my primary, but not exclusive, resources.

PROS:
The book gives a good overview of what's up with 2008 and what's on the test. It divides it all up into neatly digestible sections. It's clearly written.

One of the best things about the book is that it comes with a practice exam on CD. The practice exam has roughly 30 questions for each of the 7 sections:

Implementing Tables and Views
Implementing Programming Objects
Working with Query Fundamentals
Applying Additional Query Techniques
Working with Additional SQL Server Components
Working with XML Data
Gathering Performance Information.

It comes with some source code, so I was able to play around with the concepts in my own instance of SQL Server. Very cool.

CONS:
It's a little longish. Could have been more concise. (Then again, this is a problem I have with almost all the tech books I get these days.) Some of the sample code code have been a little clearer by using simpler examples. The practice exam questions were harder than the ones on the test. (This might be a good thing. If you can pass the practice one you should be able to pass the real one.)

In sum, I wouldn't say it's a perfect book but it really helped me and I doubt I would have made the grade w/o it.

Buy this if only if you like errors and really boring writing.

Can anyone spot the issue with the below code?

IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM sys.objects WHERE object_id = OBJECT_ID(N'[dbo].[employees]') AND type in (N'U'))
DROP TABLE [dbo].[employees]
GO
CREATE TABLE Employees (
ID INT IDENTITY (1,1) NOT NULL
,lastname NVARCHAR(MAX) NOT NULL
);
GO
ALTER TABLE dbo.Employees ADD CONSTRAINT id_index PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED (ID);
GO
CREATE INDEX name_index ON Employees (lastName);

That's right! lastname is NVARCHAR(MAX).... An index cannot be created on that column. One gets the error:

Msg 1919, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
Column 'lastname' in table 'Employees' is of a type that is invalid for use as a key column in an index.

This is just ONE of MANY test questions that are blatantly wrong.

ZERO stars!!!!!!!

I, as well as others, used this book as my only preparation material for the exam. I have always used the Microsoft Press preparation material for all my exams. In all cases, I have passed the exam with a good margin - this was no exception.
The book material was the typical high-quality content that I've come to expect from Microsoft Press and its authors. The relevant exam topics were covered quite well in most cases. After making two passes through the book, I felt ready for the exam. There were a few chapters that I felt should have been placed in different areas of the book, but only because they would have led into one another better in a different order, as opposed to the frequent forward references they made. I also felt that a little more attention to TRY...CATCH blocks, collations, and RAISERROR would have been nice to see - especially the interaction between TRY...CATCH and RAISERROR.
The practice exams, on the other hand, were a bit more dubious. While I felt the book was an excellent preparation, when I took the practice tests, I felt like the book was insufficient. After my second pass through the book and another attempt at the exams, I had the feeling that the practice tests were a bit unrealistic. Many of the questions covered topics that were not addressed in the book, or gave very detailed and almost obscure questions on topics that were not addressed. Additionally, there were a good number of management questions that didn't seem to fit the scope of the exam. These questions led me to realize that I was prepared for the exam, despite a low score on the practice tests - a realization that was quite accurate. However, the advantage to these questions was a good bit of research that was useful on the exam.
Overall, the preparation material of this book is excellent, though the practice exams are a bit lacking and incorrectly-targeted. I certainly recommend the book for anybody that would like to take the exam - just don't put too much stock in the test exams.

Usually the official MS help files are a bit dry and require explanation. That's why we buy books like this. However, what I'm doing is reading this book and referring to the official help files when I get stuck. I suspect that English is not the first language of whoever wrote major parts of chapter 1. The examples are terrible. The author has made a poor choice of tables and columns to illustrate the grouping functions. The (non) description of 'BY CUBE' is the lamest attempt at an explanation I have read in a textbook. It's as if the author doesn't understand it himself, or can't be bothered explaining it to others.

The topics are not covered in the correct sequence e.g. UNION ALL is used in code before it is explained. The explanation of locking will only make sense to you if you already understand locking. For almost all of this book I have ended up referring to other books in order to understand it. The authors may know some stuff about SQL/Server but they haven't got a clue how to write an instructional book on the subject. Their explanations for concepts are porrly worded and often completely confusing. I have lost count of the number of times I have to cross reference with other sources to get clarification. I haven't even started on the typos (including in the code) and some of the poorly worded questions in the example tests.

On page 78 in one of the case scenarios, they suggest that a company fax number should be created in a numeric field. Oh dear. Oh dear. On page 207 there is a huge editing error where they change topic half way through an example. I've pretty much given up on the book now and am using it mostly as a rough guide to the types of questions that might get asked in the exam.

I've given it 1 star. I nearly gave it 2 because it's not entirely useless: it at least serves as a roadmap of the syllabus for this exam, although other reviewers have suggested it doesn't even cover that purpose very well. I am very suspicious of anyone who gave this book a 5 star rating. Did those people actually read and attempt to use this book for its intended purpose? I doubt it very much.

A note to the authors: if anyone asks you to collaborate in writing another textbook, don't do it; it's not your skillset, really its not.

WPF (70-502), ASP.NET (70-515), WCF (70-503) and now SQL Server. None of the previous books was perfect but this one is by far the worse.

It's only about 450 pages long, the 3 others were 550-1000 pages. It matters because the book is not short because of lack of material to cover.

- Many questions in the exam have material not covered in the book.

- The material is not covered in-depth, way too often you're told to go to SQL Server Books Online.

- It's common sense to explain an acronym the first time you use it. Not in this book. Again, you have to go and figure it out somewhere else (no, it wasn't "SQL").

- More typos and code formatting inconsistencies than usual.

- General inconsistency throughout the book. You can easily tell that a chapter was written by a different person from the previous chapter. And that one of the authors is not an english native speaker, which only adds to the confusion when trying to figure out some sentences.

- The PDF version of the book doesn't allow you to copy text (unlike the other 3 books). You're going to be spending a ridiculous amount of time typing long queries in the practice questions. I used an online OCR program in the worse cases (didn't bother to find a crack, i regret now).

- The PDF version of the book has the page numbers messed up in the first chapter.

I wonder how this book was "Reader's Choice 2008 Best Exam Preparation Product". There weren't any other books available? Or maybe the book was evaluated as carefully as it was reviewed before being sent to the printer?

On the positive side, because the book is not all bad, some of the practice questions get complex enough to prepare you well for the exam. The "Real Wordl" stories are nice too. Can't remember more positives, other than the book cover being sky blue, more soothing than the black and red of the other books.

I rate this MCTS kit Incomplete and Insufficient. In short, I feel this was a waste of my time. It's like reading a "dictionary" to make sense out of a piece of literature. Some of the information is there but it lacks intuitive approach and it gave me the impression it was not prepared with care. The practice exam has questions which were never mentioned in the book; yet it refers to the chapters -- why not just indicate "look this up online" and save everyone some time. The reason I purchased this book is because I wanted to increase my knowledge and become certified -- if I were to learn most of the content "online" or by other means, then what am I doing with this kit? Things are explained under each subject matter, but not much effort is given as to the reasoning and applicability, examples are weak to none to support the content. The SQL samples in the book do not usually show output -- how do you expect understanding of related SQL query? To give an example about the practice test, the test refers to SQL:Batch Completed event and requires you to know its event class is 12. This fact is not mentioned in the book, if it is, it's not under the related chapter. The fact that SQL Server Duration and CPU are stored in different uom is another crucial fact that's missed in the book, but happens to be in the test. References to the items were there but units were not mentioned. In best practices, it recommends "it is typically a good idea to execute each query a few times" w/ respect to collecting a metric. Undermining the effect of "cache" on your results; without mentioning how to reset the cache, this would be misleading. The other part that was missing was the lack of any graphics to aid in explaining concepts. I think techniques that help grasp the content better, such as graphics, lines, images, drawings, should have been used.

I do have a love/hate relationship with this book. There are nice things on it and others that I really dislike.

The positive side, it is a clear and concise book. Explanations are easy to follow, plenty of graphics and not a lot of "blah blah blah" trying to explain a simple T-SQL statement or query; that's good, I really love those kind of books because don't make me waste my precious time :-) To give you an example, I found very clear its explanation about SQL2005/2008 partitions; the previous SQL2005 cert book, 70-431, put more details and more complex examples on that particular topic, that could confuses you a bit.

The negative side is that this is intended to pass the Microsoft certification, not just a mere T-SQL or developer book. If that was the case, I could give a higher rating. But people who get or buy this book (not me on this case) are investing their money in something will help them to pass the Microsoft test with little or not effort, assuming you read it from cover to cover. I do not feel or I do not think that's the case here or the book allow you to do that. Explanations are short, the book itself is thin, so all obscure and weird options that we do have in T-SQL won't be here, in fact, they are not. And that's misleading, because when you seat for the real test, Microsoft will try to "kill" you with really strange T-SQL options and queries that you barely see in real world.

At this point you maybe wonder why I bought it? well ... I opened it in a popular bookstore and enjoyed the way has been written. I need to improve my programming skills, not my dba skills, and this book satisfies that need. I am currently not pursuing this cert. and because that reason, I believe is or was money well spent.

If you're new or not an experienced T-SQL programmer, do not rely on this book only to pass the Microsoft test, get another resource, like "Microsoft SQL Server 2008 T-SQL Fundamentals" from Itzik Ben-Gan. Itzik's book is pure gold, awesome book. Both provide a better coverage for the 70-433 test.