This book is a very good way to get started with Microsoft SQL Server 2005. It covers all of the major subjects that an administrator will need to deal with. Myself and another on my staff have used this book to set up and manage SQL Server in a very short time with no formal training. We do not believe that it is the only book or resource that we will need on this very powerful database system, but we each have a copy because it is the best place to start with unfamiliar SQL subjects. We found that it is also a good book just to browse so we each have a copy.

I am giving it five stars because no other book that we have reviewed for this purpose does as well. We are both familiar with other database systems, such as Progress and MySQL, Access, and others, but neither of had used the Microsoft program before.

The author will use page after page describing how to accomplish something, only to finally state that "..this has been deprecated in 2005, us function ... instead", without an explanation of the "new" function. I feel ripped off. This book is useless. You cannot learn SQL Server 2005 from this book. Believe it or not, the Microsoft Books Online offer more information than this waste of paper.

I've had a terrible time learning SQL Server programming from this book. I've got lots of Oracle experience, so picking up T-SQL should have been fairly easy.



My main complaint is that the book is horridly edited and organized. For example, at one point I found that the author was using the "GO" command in his scripts, and I didn't remember reading what that meant. I went to the index and found where "GO" was introduced. It was a in a "Tip" box more than 20 pages back -- explained in brief, with no example, completely out of any context, and "GO" didn't appear in any scripts until 20 pages later. Now why would the author do that? This book is full of things like that.



He struggles a bit with English, too. For example, he says a function is "threefold" if it returns one of three possible values. The language doesn't prevent learning from the book, but it makes for a jarring ride.



I've pushed my way through the book and I'm better off than when I started, so I'll give it 2 stars instead of 1. But man, am I frustrated.

I've had a terrible time learning SQL Server programming from this book. I've got lots of Oracle experience, so picking up T-SQL should have been fairly easy.

My main complaint is that the book is horridly edited and organized. For example, at one point I found that the author was using the "GO" command in his scripts, and I didn't remember reading what that meant. I went to the index and found where "GO" was introduced. It was a in a "Tip" box more than 20 pages back -- explained in brief, with no example, completely out of any context, and "GO" didn't appear in any scripts until 20 pages later. Now why would the author do that? This book is full of things like that.

He struggles a bit with English, too. For example, he says a function is "threefold" if it returns one of three possible values. The language doesn't prevent learning from the book, but it makes for a jarring ride.

I've pushed my way through the book and I'm better off than when I started, so I'll give it 2 stars instead of 1. But man, am I frustrated.

I've had a terrible time learning SQL Server programming from this book. I've got lots of Oracle experience, so picking up T-SQL should have been fairly easy.

My main complaint is that the book is horridly edited and organized. For example, at one point I found that the author was using the "GO" command in his scripts, and I didn't remember reading what that meant. I went to the index and found where "GO" was introduced. It was a in a "Tip" box more than 20 pages back -- explained in brief, with no example, completely out of any context, and "GO" didn't appear in any scripts until 20 pages later. Now why would the author do that? This book is full of things like that.

He struggles a bit with English, too. For example, he says a function is "threefold" if it returns one of three possible values. The language doesn't prevent learning from the book, but it makes for a jarring ride.

I've pushed my way through the book and I'm better off than when I started, so I'll give it 2 stars instead of 1. But man, am I frustrated.

What I like on this book is that it is very comprehensive.
All components of SQL Server 2005 are described in it. The description of each component is clear. Besides a couple of sentences, I did not have any problems to understand the content of this book. I found some small typographical errors, but as a whole I think that this is a very gook book.

Looking for a book to use as a training guide. First of all, this book was written using a BETA version of SQL Server 2005. Many areas changed from beta to full release of SQL Server 2005, therefore already a big worry about this book. Secondly, for a beginners book to only talk about installing SQL Server in Chapter 16 (part III of the book!!!) is poor and shows a book thrown together in my opinion. It looks as if this is an update of his previous book (?) where there is text clearly about SQL Server 2000 with an "add on" sentence saying how SQL Server 2005 has changed this. For beginners this is confusing. They dont care about SQL Server 2000 or if they did they would buy a SQL Server 20005 Beginners Guide.
Other examples are where the author gets quite technical but then new functionality (such as the APPLY operator) "is outside the scope of this book". However deep security areas that are discsussed are "inside" the scope of this book.
I would recommend you either wait for the rewrite or even better, update of this book that uses the correct version of SQL Server 2005, or look elsewhere. I sent this book straight back. Sorry

This book provides a solid introduction to SQL Server 2005. The coverage is comprehensive. (Very few books attempt to cover the relational database engine with Transact-SQL, database administration, performance tuning, Analysis Services and XML in one volume and this one does it successfully.) The writing is clear and I did not have any problems to understand all topics discussed in it.
My IT department also used the book to learn how the implementation of stored procedures and UDFs can be done using C#. The coverage of this topic is not too deep, but the existing examples and the given description allowed us to implement several routines and to evaluate the use of CLR for our department.
My opinion is that this book is not for complete beginners. But, if you have some knowledge of relational database systems and wants one book as a source, I can recommend it to you.

I found this book to be ok as a general overview, but found a puzzling mix of too much information in some parts, and not enough in other parts. Overall, it tended to be a "slow read," even for a programming book, especially if you have any background in SQL Server or Oracle.

One thing that I did not like about the book at all was that the tables lacked data for the examples. Too many queries returned no data, when they just as easily could return rows with just a few more rows in the tables. I realize that these are supposed to be simple tables, but I understand examples a lot better with actual data, not "in the sample database, there are no...."

Another shortcoming is that there is a lot of "this will be explained ten or fifteen chapters from now." If a concept is introduced, it should be at least partially covered. If the author was worried about the length of the book, he could have not had so much repetition of trivial information, which I found scattered throughout the book.

Overall, this is a book that could be better organized. It never really becomes a reference book, nor a design book. However, if you don't mind skipping around from chapter to chapter, it can be used as a semi-useful reference.

Mr. Petkovic has once again landed a successful effort on SQL Server to help those who are in most need. Chapters all include an excellent quiz section to quickly recap and test your comprehension. Great tool for those who plan to use it as a teaching guide! Our IT department and clients have found this feature very helpful. Once again great job, easy to read and understand!

And perhaps a good reference manual at that. But this is not "A Beginner's Guide" as the subtitle states. The author "describes" the properties, data types, functions, syntax, etc., of SQL Server 2005, but does not implement the step by step building of a sample database along the way, as one would expect of a beginner's book. It's like trying to learn this high powered program by reading help files; not very helpful if one is not first presented with relevant questions in a practical application. I would recommend this book to anyone with a photographic memory.

I read the previous book on SQL by the same author. That book was really helpful. For this reason and to learn about the new features of SQL Server 2005, I picked up his new book. From my point of view, most features are described very well, especially CLR procedures and triggers, as well as the security part (concerning create login, create user, and create schema statements). I would have given it 5 stars, but the book lacks any information concerning the upgrade process.

This book is almost ideal material to introduce you to world of TSQL and SQL Server.

It is not the last book that you will need - it dow not cover all aspects of SQL Server , but that is not expected frm title anyway.

Author has a good sence of what topics are appropriate for the begineer. I would recomanded it not just to junior DBAs but also to C# and VB.NET developers that need to cover SQL Server development as well.

I am surprised that someone would give 1 * to this book.

I personally do not use it, but I asked couple of developers to read previous and this version of this book before they start working on my projects.

I disagree with one of the earlier reviewers about the comments that he made:

- System Tables or System Catalogs - nothing has really changed. It just MS marketing BS.

- sp for managing logins are still around - i see no harm in that. Especially when I have a legacy systems and ton of code that is using them.

- User is complaining about lack of coverage of Resources db. Such system database does not exist - on SQL Server.

- Covering of Mirroring is not ideal, but I would not even put it a book, since Microsoft has decided to not support it for at least 6 moths. My assumption is that MS will probably change it at the end.

If this was a genuine reader of the book, I would question how he qualifies as a beginner if he is aware of details of Mirroring deployment.

If you are starting to work with SQL Server, buy this book. You will not regret it.



In my view this is just another example how some people are obusing

I am very disappointed about this book. It is not really a book about SQL Server 2005 but a book about the previous version, SQL Server 2000. There is obsolete material everywhere in the book sometimes including entire sections.

Some examples:

Chapter 11 - System Catalog
The entire section 'System Tables' is obsolete. System tables are no longer available and we should use Catalog Views instead. The old SQL Server 2000 System Tables have been implemented as read-only views for backward compatibility purposes only.

Chapter 12 - Security
All the 6 stored procedures starting in page 331 (sp_addlogin, sp_droplogin, etc.) are obsolete. Create login, drop login, and alter login should be used instead.

Chapter 15 - SQL Server System Environment
Page 410. System Databases. The new Resource database is not included. Page 413. The osql utility is obsolete, sqlcmd should be used instead.

Chapter 20
Page 500. Restoring master database is incomplete, does not consider the new Resource database and do not explain how to rebuild the master database.

Page 490. There is only a couple of paragraphs about database mirroring, probably the best new feature of SQL Server 2005. Also, same section, the author says "to implement mirroring, use the MIRROR TO option in the BACKUP DATABASE". MIRROR TO and database mirroring have nothing in common, except similar name!!!

Same page also says 'database mirroring is not implemented in the first release ...' which is not exactly true. It is really implemented for evaluation purposes by using trace flag 1400.

Several other new features of SQL Server 2005 are missing (like database mail) or explained in less than a page (like database mirroring or DDL triggers).

I did not read the entire book but after finding out this issues I stopped reading it. I think I should wait for Kalen Delaney's book instead.

Rocio Reza