Customer Reviews

McSe: SQL Server 6.5 Administration Study Guide

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I'm angry and frustrated. Don't waste you time and money. I have not passed the exam because of Sybex book. This material covers less than 5% of the exam.

I have 5 Sybex books related to MCSE certification which I received as part of my classes. I have passed the core four exams using Exam Cram and Transcenders and I want to warn people not to use Sybex material. It is trash. The books are full of errors and terminally crammed with useless verbosity.

The bottom line is this book does not fully prepare you for the SQL Administration exam. I was shocked to be taking the exam and encounter material that I had simply not been introduced to. Beyond this it was written well enough, but its failure to adequately prepare the reader for the exam is a major shortcoming.

Used in conjunction with other resources, such as New Riders TestPrep or the Exam Cram book when released, it should be useful.

I found the book useful as a beginning introduction to SQL admin. However, the questions and exercises did not prepare me for the exam. (Having passed all my Novell tests and the first four MS test the first time,I was surprised not to pass this one the first time, even after much effort.) They were far easier than the actual exam. This might be useful if one were to combine it with the SQL books online as well as another training source.

I am an MCSE with a bunch of MS Access experience but very little SQL Server experience. I found this book to be an excellent introduction to the subject. The text is written to specifically and directly address the points of the official MS exam guidelines, but that does not get in the way of it being a cohesive explanation of the use of the product. The text includes a great number of screen shots and many excercises to guide one through most of the significant functions of the software. There also seemed to be fairly few typos. The end of chapter questions, and the troubleshooting chapter, however, could have been a bit more substantial. With this text, the on-line docs, and a bit of time playing with the demo copy of the software available from the MS website, the exam was not all that tough.

The SQL Server 6.5 Administration Study Guide presents information in a clear and consise manner. Questions are provided at the end of each chapter for review. However, neither the questions nor the content prepare you for the actual exam questions. I found that little of the material covered was up to the caliber of the actual test questions. I do not recommend this as the sole study guide for the SQL Server 6.5 Admin exam.