Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Performance Optimization and Tuning Handbook [Paperback]

Ken England Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer and a Microsoft Certified Trainer (Author), Gavin JT Powell (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1555583199 | ISBN-13: 978-1555583194 | Publication Date: April 23, 2007 | Edition: 1

Database professionals will find that this new edition aids in mastering the latest version of Microsoft's SQL Server. Developers and database administrators (DBAs) use SQL on a daily basis in application development and the subsequent problem solving and fine tuning. Answers to SQL issues can be quickly located helping the DBA or developer optimize and tune a database to maximum efficiency.

Basic questions are easily located on the topics of filtering, sorting, operators, conditionals, pseudo columns, single row functions, joins, grouping functions, sub queries, composite queries, hierarchies, flashback queries, parallel queries, expressions and regular expressions. Assistance on DML, data types (including collections), XML, DDL for basic database objects such as tales, views and indexes, partitioning, and security is also considered.

* Identifies the most common issues DBAs face day to day for easy reference
*Provides DBAs with solutions actually used by the authors in enterprise environments to resolve common and specialized problems to optimization issues.
* Addresses issues that have been introduced by new features which can add more control but reduce performance.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Ken England is President and Founder of Database Technologies, a database consulting, product evaluation and training firm. A Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer and a Microsoft Certified Trainer, Ken England is widely regarded as an authority on SQL Server and other leading database products. He is also the author of the SQL Server 6.5 Performance Optimization and Tuning Handbook.

Gavin Powell, BSc. Comp.Sci., OCP (Oracle8i Certified Professional) has fifteen years of computer industry experience. Diverse experience in database administration and database development in both relational and object databases. Applications development experience is procedural and object-oriented. He also has some systems administration experience. His extensive consulting experience includes software vendors, internet .COM's (some unfortunately have met with their demise), accounting, banking, financial services, the travel industry, construction, retail, mining, shipping, education and general advisory capacity. Gavin Powell has worked with many software products, tools and programming languages. These tools include items in the list shown below. He has authored two successful books Oracle .High performance Tuning and the just released Oracle SQL

Product Details

• Paperback: 520 pages
• Publisher: Digital Press; 1 edition (April 23, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555583199
• ISBN-13: 978-1555583194
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,037,108 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not all it appears, October 4, 2007

By 

Andrew Phillips (Crowthorne, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Performance Optimization and Tuning Handbook (Paperback)

I know Ken England well. Although his name is on the book he did not write it. He stopped writing books with his SQL Server 2000 Performance Edition. This all came as an unpleasant surprise to him as not only did he not write any new material for the 2005 book but he did not even get sent a copy of the book to proof.
He told me it's not great to see your name on a book you have neither written nor read but publishers apparently reserve the (legal) right to do this!

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars My name on the cover, March 12, 2008

By 

Kurt Survance (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Performance Optimization and Tuning Handbook (Paperback)

Up to this point, I have avoided reviewing this book because I don't like being negative, but this book has damaged Ken England's reputation and I would like to clear the air.

About 18 months ago the publishers offered me the opportunity to be technical editor for this new edition. I was flattered because I considered Ken's previous edition to be the best written on the subject. The publishers also requested my permission to reprint, on the back cover, a review I did of the previous edition. That tickled my ego as well.

After reading the draft, I was appalled at the gross errors of fact and, perhaps worse, the errors of omission in regard to the many important new performance tuning features of SQL Server 2005. I gave the publishers my opinion of the book and told them I could not be involved unless I could rewrite the new material entirely. They did not agree and found another technical editor.

To answer some of the points of contention in previous reviews of this book:

Despite the review from Adam Cassel questioning the truth of an assertion that Ken England did not write this edition, I can confirm that Ken England did not participate at all in the re-write of this book. He knew nothing about it until after it was published.

Gavin Powell did write the new material. His reply to the criticism in an earlier review is disingenuous. ("My most sincere and profuse apologies if you are finding things which are out of date. Please return the book to the retailer you purchased it from if it is too out of date.") He implies that the errors are leftovers from the previous edition that got overlooked in the update process. That is not true. Things are not "out of date", they are wrong and the errors are his.

I gave this book 2 stars instead of zero because Ken's core material is still in there and it is still worth reading. As soon as the previous version is out of print, this will be the only place you can find it.

Kurt

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Disapointment, October 25, 2007

By 

Adi Cohn (Ramat Hasharon, Israel) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Performance Optimization and Tuning Handbook (Paperback)

I found the book to be very disappointing. In the past I purchased the previous books for SQL Server 6.5 and SQL Server 2000. Both were excellent books, so when I saw that there is book for SQL Server 2005, I bought it immediately. Unfortunately I felt that this book is not as good as the previous books. The book is completely based on the 2000 version, with just few things that were added. It doesn't give you deep cover of many of the new tools and options that we have with SQL Server 2005 and sometimes it even writes about things that exist only for backwards compatibility with out even mentioning that there is a new way to get the information. For example - It gives a great explanation about DBCC Showcontig statement, and doesn't even mention the sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats DMV (If you look at BOL the first thing that it will write about DBCC showcontig is "This feature will be removed in a future version of Microsoft SQL Server. Avoid using this feature in new development work, and plan to modify applications that currently use this feature. Use sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats instead.").

One of the most important improvements of SQL Server 2005 was the Dynamic Management Views. The book hardly writes about the DMV. For example the book has a chapter about indexes. It didn't even mention sys.dm_db_index_XXXX and the sys.dm_db_missing_index_XXXX dynamic management views in that chapter. In my opinion if you write a chapter about indexes, you should include an explanation about those DMV.

Sometimes it even gives you completely wrong information. The explanation about set statistics xml is only 4 lines, saying that it just gives you the same information but in XML format (doesn't even says the same as what. Since this comes just after the explanation of set statistics time and set statistics io statements, I assume that the author meant those statements). In reality set statistics xml gives you much more information and it is one of the most important tools that we can use to optimize query.

While I wrote this review, I read 2 reviews saying that this book was not written by Ken England and Gavin Powell. I guess that this explains the hugh difference between there previous books and this book that just used there good reputation but apparently has nothing to do with them.

Adi