Customer Reviews

Transact-SQL Cookbook

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Rather than a real-world "cookbook", ostensibly targeted to database professionals who want to avoid reinventing the wheel, this book would be better positioned as a companion to an introductory text on SQL (e.g. for a class on SQL, where the class laboratory work employs SQL Server).

One or two of the chapters do cover problems which baffle a lot of experienced SQL programmers with whom I have worked; a good example is the chapter on the implementation of hierarchical data models.

There is some minimal attention paid to performance implications of alternative query formulations, but very little useful information on practical database and query tuning.

The practical examples are generally good for building the necessary context for the various implementations, but there are some clear gaps in the authors' understanding of the underlying business problems and the conceptual solution techniques. Also, there are some flat-out errors: for example, the explanation (and the implementation) of exponential averaging (more commonly referred to as smoothing) is simply incorrect.

All in all, I would recommend this to someone who is just learning SQL, and is having trouble "getting their head" around how it would be used in practice. For someone already working in the field, an online subscription to SQL Server magazine (giving access to all of the source code for the articles) would be a better investment.

This book is everything I was looking for. I bought it on my recent trip to United States. I had a chance to read it on the long flight back to Europe.

I needed a clear and concise book to help me with my MS SQL programming problems. I think I found it. It clearly explains logic behind the code and examples. Other books often mix together a lot of other topics, but not this one. The text is only about coding. No administration or fine-tuning. I think it's a very good book for programmers.

If your interests include administration and other topics for DBA's, this book will be of no help for you. But that's the strength of the book. Just a few hundred pages, but no page is wasted on issues not directly related to coding.

This is a very concise and to-the-point book. It assumes that the user has a basic understanding of T-SQL. So, you won't see any repetition from SQL Server Books Online.

Authors chose very interesting topics, and backed them up with real life scenarios and practical examples. So, every example makes sense.

Book is very easy to read and understand. If you are a beginner T-SQL programmer (or someone coming from a VB or other programming backgrounds), this book helps you get on the right track, as it clearly explains how to think in terms of sets. If you are an intermediate level SQL programmer, you can really use the examples provided in this book and start your journey towards becoming an advanced SQL programmer. For advanced users of SQL, this serves as a great reference.

No DBA nonsense, just plain programming. Great stuff, clear explanations, excellent code!!! It's an incredible book that can really help programmers get up to speed quickly.

The chapters in the book are laid out properly. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to further expand their knowledge. There are some errors in the book. But this is so typical of programming books. I haven't run into any problems that I couldn't figure out.

It helped me solve a problem that had been pestering me for some time. Like other O'Reilly titles, the book is an excellent piece of work.

I've read this book and I'm recommending it to all my friends. This book contains concise explanations of many important topics. Anyone who would like to learn about the concepts should read it since it covers almost all levels of understanding from the overall picture to the nitty-gritty details of Transact-SQL. Examples are clear and well structured.

Not for beginners and probably not for hard-core gurus. For me, a programmer with no good mentor to learn from, this book is very useful. Overall, this book has everything you need to master TSQL programming on your own.

Information on performing statistics calculations using TSQL is very rare. Using this book, I was able to write a couple of User-Defined Functions that provide both Confidence Intervals and Exact Confidence Intervals.

Although TSQL isn't the right tool for this particular job, requirements can sometimes put you in a bind. I would like to see this chapter greatly expanded in a future edition. Someone needs to fill this vacuum.

Read the negative reveiws and bought the book anyway. Still can't figure out what it was that other reviewers found objectionable...

This book was helpful to me because it takes the subject of a SQL query much deeper than most of the texts that I have read. It puts emphasis on solving problems using the query language instead of procedural language, and it shows some truly eye-opening examples of what can be done with a simple SELECT statement.

The authors are clearly subject experts, and their work is in keeping with O'Reilly's generally high standards for technical references. My only regret is that the book wasn't longer.

I re-read this book every month or so. I was turned on to it by a co-worker when working for a securities trading firm. It has proven invaluable to me at each job I take.

The set based concepts can help you optimize code that is laden with cursors and strange logical progressions. Some of the techniques are not new to programming they are just applied to database programming.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who works with TSQL.

I cannot say enough great things about this book! I'm a SQL Server developer and have used many forms of the logic presented from this book in many of my daily routines. This is my first review and my inspiration was to oppose all negative or irrational comments made in some of the previous reviews. Are you sure you read the "T-SQL Cookbook" by OReilly's? Might be a little too advanced for some, I can see that in your reveiw. How is it not in depth? Because it is not for beginners? It has thousands of sollutions to everyday problems. BUY THIS BOOK FOR A GREAT REPORT WRITING TOOL, DEVELPOR HANDBOOK OR WHATEVER YOU HAVE TO DO IN SQL SERVER 2000!!!!!!!!!