Customer Reviews

Mastering Microsoft SQL Server 2005

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

 

 

I like everything I have read in this book but the screenshots the authors want you to see are too small to be seen clearly. (I use a magnifying glass (no joke) to enlarge the images). I'm sure Sybex reduced them to make them fit the page. I contacted Sybex to see if the book came in a pdf version or if the images were available in a seperate format. They have not gotten back to me and I take this to mean the answer is "no".

I particularly like the chapter on Analysis Services. It took me a long time on my own to learn what they lay out in that chapter. I wish I had their book before I started down my path.

Summary: good text, hard to view images.

For me, this book provides a very good balance between giving me enough information and not flooding me with unnecessary details. It gives a good overview of databases in general without spending half the book on it and is very easy to skim through and get the information I am looking for. IMO, it gives just the right amount of information to help one become very productive with sql server 2005. One last thing. Not that this is a big thing but the book is very large but paper and binding that were used for this book are fairly light weight and make it easy, even with the large size of the book, to read it.

"Mastering Microsoft SQL Server 2005" is a humdrum enumeration of SQL Server 2005's capabilities and how to configure and use them. It might be a reasonable starting point for novices learning about SQL Server 2005, but I did not find anything in the book that is not readily available via a few minutes of googling the internet, or exploring MS's support site and the many MS/SQL Server newsgroups out there.

There are a fair number of errors; for instance, I found a number of places where references in the text to "MS/SQL Server 2000" (from the previous version of this book) had not been updated.

Many parts of the book consist of page after page of screenshots - especially in the sections for configuring specific features. The screenshots are hard to read and take up alot of room. I question their value except for the most novice of users.

All in all, this is not a book a skilled DBA will need. It provides very little useful information when moving from SQL Server 2000 to 2005, nor is it of much benefit for those looking to transition from a competing vendor's solution to Microsoft SQL Server.

If you are new to SQL as a DBA or developer, or are installing a SQL Server for the first time, this book is a useful starting point. Even so, you will quickly outgrow "Mastering Microsoft SQL Server 2005", and may eventually decide the steep price of this book was not worth the investment.

Firstly, I hold the authors with utmost respect. The SQL Server 2000 version of "Mastering" book was great. That said, I expected the same, but I'm not sure it was worth the price with this iteration. There is a fair amount of carry-over contents, such as how to normalize a table, what a view is, etc.

It is great for someone just starting and need comprehensive coverage of the product. However, if you have read the previous version, you may benefit more by seeking publications that are specifically about new features of SQL Server 2005, bypassing what you already know. My recommendation in that area remains to be "A First Look at SQL Server 2005 for Developers" by Beauchemin, Berglund and Sullivan by Addison Wesley, although many books were published since then.

My slight disappointment comes from the lack of coverage in Enterprise-level features. Mirroring, partitioning (finally!) etc are not even touched, and it doesn't talk much in the way of scalability.

Suggestions to authors: Change the title to Mastering SQL Server 2005 STANDARD EDITION - which is what this book appears to be mostly. Most people without the luxury of Enterprise Edition read this type of book, and then go to google or BOL to find out if it's available in the edition at hand, or worst yet, keep using Developer Edition and find out about edition requirement at deployment time. A edition-specific reference might prove to be a time-saver.

In sum, no doubt this book is a result of hard work - all 1028 pages of it - but check if you are the intended target audience before you buy: If you know SQL Server 2000 fairly well, then go with some publication that specifically discuss the new features. On the other hand, if SQL Server 2005 is your first database and need a comprehensive guide to various concepts, then this is great.

I found this book essential for setting up and configuring SQL Server 2005 in a development environment. Confusing topics like permissions vs. roles are covered clearly and the index is good. I would read the other reviews for cautions if you are going to a production environment, but to get started this book is very useful.

This book was released just after SQL 2005 was released. So the author probably had to write much of it while SQLS 2005 was still in flux.

In a few cases, the information does not appear to match the final release, and the screen shots are hard to read (too small).

But for the most part, the book still has some value. It is a good introduction to sql server and, overall, an easy read.

There are two things preventing a higher rating.

1 The examples in the book and the current sample database from microsoft do not match. Microsoft has changed the structure of the Adventureworks database so some of the queries in the book no longer work. If you know SQL you can work around it.

2 The section concerning ordering views is wrong. Again, I assume Microsoft changed the way it worked after the book was published.

Overall this book is a good introduction to SQL server. However the book has too many errors relating to the sample database. The entire section dealing with joins, references table columns that do not exist in the Adventure Works sample database. Additionally there are random mistakes throughout the rest of the book regarding the sample database.

This offers a good overview of SQL 2005 and its new features, plus will be sufficient for those who need an intro to SQL server in general. The book came out a while back and unfortunately was not thoroughly edited. There are sections where they refer to Enterprise Manager instead of Management Studio (2000 vs SQL 2005) and also they title a chapter "SQL Server integration services", but then the heading elsewhere is referred to as DTS (again, SQL 2000's ETL component). Those are small problems, though.

Unlike another book on amazon that was rated highly (Developing with SQL Server 2005), this one extensively covers SSIS--that other one does not mention it in any way, which is a far more egregious ommission than a focused analysis of mirroring or partitioning.

backup and restore topics are useless, It will mislead you. It has got lot of typos. Overall its ok book but I dont recommended this one. I bought this after reading amazon reviews but disappointed after going through few chapters.