Customer Reviews

Microsoft SQL Server 2005: Changing the Paradigm (SQL Server 2005 Public Beta Edition)

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

 

 

Wow!! Just the book I have been waiting for on SQL Server 2005 - contains material for beginners and advanced SQL Server 2005 professionals, covering administration, programming, and BI aspects.

The best thing is that the book is based on "stable" June CTP and contains most recent information. I looked for other available titles on SQL Server 2005 - either they are not yet published (scheduled for Dec 2005 or Jan 2006) or are quite outdated (contains Beta 1 or Beta 2 text).

In addition, the book flows nicely. Begins with expanding on the title "changing the database paradigm", architectural details, setup and upgrade issues, new features overview, tools and utilities in detail, security (my favorite chapter), reliability and high availability, performance analysis and tuning, developers technologies (XML, .NET, Service Broker), BI (SSIS, SSAS, SSRS). Book concludes with an overview of 64-bit architecture and SQL Server 2005's support for this platform.

Highly recommended for all SQL Server 2005 audiences.

I enjoyed reading this book. It has a lot of information and it is well organized. Even if it is on the beta edition, all of its content applies to the RTM version as well.

This is in response to review by NetDeveloper "Robert" on October 23rd. It is very common for companies to publish on company name, instead of individual employee names. A lot of white papers on Microsoft and other Web site are published under "Microsoft Corporation" author - and there is no trace of who wrote it. There is nothing wrong with it (as long as content is good and you learned something from it). I know history of this book - and a lot of smart guys at Scalability Experts contributed to the book. You will find a lot of other books published under organization name. Just because if does not have specific author names, it is not fair to give bad ratings, without reading the book.

Read the book and find out yourself that it is one of the best books on SQL Server 2005! It is loaded with wealth of information on SQL Server 2005, in an easy to read language and sequence.

This book is written primarily for the experienced SQL 2000 DBAs who need to know the additions and changes of SQL 2005. Even though SQL 2005 is substantially different from SQL 2000, they are also highly similar. The book focuses on the differences.

As most SQL books, the book lacks details on transactions and locking. Also, data mirroring and replication could have been more detailed and refined.

Given this was one of the first SQL 2005 books on the market, I was surprised at the level of detail outlined in this book. The author clearly understands the nuances of SQL 2005.

Overall, I highly recommend this book to those who are already familiar with SQL 2000. It will confuse those who are just starting with MS SQL.

What is the world coming to if a major publisher is allowing a technical text with an ANONYMOUS author? Do they/he/she have a rash or a criminal record they need to hide? Or have been competely booed for a prior work? Of all the pen names they had to choose one with an "Inc" in it. Are they afraid of being sued for putting out wrong information?

Amazon is not helping much either by carrying this title and not probing further for the identity of the authors.

I HAVE NOT READ the book but this pen-author practice is real hokey and enough reason for me to chastise it even if the information inside it is useful. Maybe that would communicate to them to disclose themselves on their site or in this site. I will then update my rating accordingly.

This is not a forum, but some response to Jeff Tokarsky is in order. I own a library of over 2000 technical titles in several areas of expertise and not one is published anonymously. I could not even screen against this practice because I had never even seen it before. Maybe in Harlequin romance novels but not in technical texts.

I ran through a database of 14,000 titles and did not find one other anonymous title. I beg Jeff Tokarsky to point one to me. Even then this could hardly be called "A lot".

This is not a white paper or a web article. Most web articles do have an author, except when intended as ORIGINAL documentation like BOL or MSDN by the owner of the technology. Outside those, the statistics of no anonymous resources approach those of printed texts.

A white paper usually is put out by the owners of a technology or the government itself if regarding a policy. See http://www.stelzner.com/copy-HowTo-whitepapers.php
This is not the case here.

Anyway, the previous reviewer is correct about one thing, it is slim pickings as titles go that are already out this early in the SQL Server 2005 product cycle.