SQL Server 2005 Distilled [Paperback]

Eric L. Brown (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 30, 2006

SQL Server 2000 has been one of Microsoft's most popular products ever, with more than 1 million licenses sold; there is a huge installed base. Robust sales of many books on SQL Server attest to this. The next release of SQL Server, version 2005, represents five years of development work by Microsoft. It will be a major upgrade from SQL Server 2000, with many major changes in the core technology. After a period of testing the new product, most companies are expected to upgrade to the new version. In fact, tens of thousands of companies have already been working with the beta. As companies evaulate whether and when to upgrade, they'll appreciate the advice of an insider such as Eric Brown, who was intimately involved in evangelizing about the product for three years. He knows what questions companies have, and what questions they don't even know they need to ask. They'll also appreciate the concise, dense "distilled" format - a handy, quick reference to the most common parts and new features of SQL Server 2005 delivered in a short and focused presentation. This book should appeal to anyone who works with SQL Server - administrators, developers, and technical managers alike. After they have read this book, then they will be ready to go on to one of the big, doorstop references to SQL Server; but this is the book they will turn to first

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Need to get your arms around Microsoft SQL Server 2005 fast, without getting buried in the details? Need to make fundamental decisions about deploying, using, or administering Microsoft’s latest enterprise database?

 

Need to understand what’s new in SQL Server 2005, and how it fits with your existing IT and business infrastructure? SQL Server 2005 Distilled delivers the answers you need–quickly, clearly, and objectively.

 

Former SQL Server team member Eric L. Brown offers realistic insight into every significant aspect of SQL Server 2005: its new features, architecture, administrative tools, security model, data management capabilities, development environment, and much more. Brown draws on his extensive experience consulting with enterprise users, outlining realistic usage scenarios that leverage SQL Server 2005’s strengths and minimize its limitations. Coverage includes

• Architectural overview: how SQL Server 2005’s features work together and what it means to you
• Security management, policies, and permissions: gaining tighter control over your data
• SQL Server Management Studio: Microsoft’s new, unified tool suite for authoring, management, and operations
• Availability enhancements: online restoration, improved replication, shorter maintenance/recovery windows, and more
• Scalability improvements, including a practical explanation of SQL Server 2005’s complex table partitioning feature
• Data access enhancements, from ADO.NET 2.0 to XML
• SQL Server 2005’s built-in .NET CLR: how to use it, when to use it, and when to stay with T-SQL
• Business Intelligence Development Studio: leveraging major improvements in reporting and analytics
• Visual Studio integration: improving efficiency throughout the coding and debugging process
• Simple code examples demonstrating SQL Server 2005’s most significant new features

About the Author

Eric Brown's professional computing work began in earnest in 1996 when he began work at Multiple Zones International as a product manager. While there, he realized the next big wave was the Internet, and raced to get a job at a dot-com. He worked for three dot-coms before ending up on the SQL Server Product Team at Microsoft. At one point in his early DB years, they cut the edge of SQL Server capabilities by owning a 500GB data warehouse running SQL Server 7 and 2000. In the three years he was on the team, he ran “Yukon” readiness. Brown has written a column for SQL Server Magazine, and has written extensively about SQL Server for MSDN Magazine and MSDN online library. Since leaving Microsoft officially, he has worked on this book and started an e-commerce hosting company. He is now working for Quilogy as a senior consultant on the Business Intelligence National Practice.

 

 

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 1 edition (March 30, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321349792
• ISBN-13: 978-0321349798
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,058,754 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Concise and Valuable Read, June 26, 2006

By 

Daniel Beebe (Rocklin, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: SQL Server 2005 Distilled (Paperback)

A well organized analysis, useful for DBA's, developers and managers alike. Eric Brown neatly documents the strengths and usefulness of new features while explicitly identifying limitations and weaker components.

Excellent and thorough summary of the Business Intelligence component including Microsoft's interest in the future of this speciality. By far, my favorite section was "Random Thoughts on Deployment."

While the information does not drill down to the granular how-to-code level, sufficient information is contained to direct an interested developer down the path to more specific examples.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Executive Summary for SQL Server 2005, May 1, 2007

By 

James Gruszynski "db man" (Margate, FL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: SQL Server 2005 Distilled (Paperback)

If you are an IT manager looking for an "Executive Summary" of the new features of SQL Server 2005, you will love this book! It gives you a nice overview of the new features, what they do, and suggestions for how you might apply them.

If your a programmer or a DBA looking for details and examples of how to do things in SQL Server 2005, you need to look elsewhere. My recommendation would be "Pro SQL Server 2005".

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How to choose the right tool for the job, November 13, 2006

By 

Bryant E. Byrd "akaitatsu" (Hampton, TN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: SQL Server 2005 Distilled (Paperback)

This book is perfect for the person who is not well versed in all the new features in SQL Server 2005 and wants to make an educated decision on which features to use for a given situation. I read the whole thing straight through to get my head around all the new stuff but I also noticed that it would be good for someone to just skim through to see if there is anything that would help with an immediate need. It's a lot easier to read this than some 1,000-page tome to decide which features will work for a project; then you can get the 1,000-page tome that focuses on the feature you really need.