This self-help book helped me a lot in preparing me for the MCITP exams. Having a busy time at work and no time at all to go to a learning partner, the book guided me through the learning objectives of the exam.

This review is for the 70-622! I have never reviewed any book before because I generally agree with the high ratings and therefore see no reason to write one. Beware of the other "high" reviews of this book they are for the 70-443 or 70-441 where stated which are specific to becoming an MCITP on Microsoft SQL Server 2005 not an MCITP on Windows Vista the 70-431, 70-441, 70-441 have nothing to do with this book or certification! I do not know why those reviews are here but don't listen to them for the 70-622 Book.

I am only halfway through this book and all I can say is it is riddled with a lot of typos, unclear explanations, and technical errors and leaves a lot to be desired in terms of detailed explanations in some subject areas. Also details have been left out on potential sticking points (such as making exceptions in the new Vista firewall and UAC control issues).

For example one pitfall I discovered early on there is no explanation in the difference of going to start Run or start and the search box in Vista (these are two different things the run box is not on the start menu by default).

Typos:
pg. 246 is just one example of many typos. It says under the section Histogram Bar: "If you have a large number of values and you're primarily interested in the current value (rather than the value of each counter over time), this will be EARLIER to read then the line chart"
I think it should have said EASIER, but being that we are talking about a histogram which has to do with a timeframe it could also mean it shows an earlier point then the line chart. However if that were the case that would be some extremely poor sentence structure. I do believe it should have said EASIER.

Technical Issues:
When joining the Vista PC to a Windows 2003 Server Domain you get a DNS related error message. What the author fails to mention is that you may have to go into the advanced properties of the NIC card and either under TCP/IP v4 or v6 enter the IP address of the 2003 Server as your preferred DNS server before the Vista PC's can join the domain.

On pg. 238 - 239 Practice 3 Configuring and Event Subscription
The terms Event collecting and Event forwarding are counter intuitive. Instead of laying out bulleted parameters such as the author saying Vista PC1 is the collecting computer and Vista PC2 is the forwarding computer would be helpful. Really to grasp this counter intuitive convention of naming they have used here a diagram would have been best showing the events and how they are collected and forwarded.

You would think the collecting computer would be the one the events are being generated on. That is not the case it is the one getting the events from the forwarding computer which is forwarding the events to it.

During this exercise I got an error saying "Object reference not set to an instance of an object". After changing two things (making an exception in the windows firewall and putting in a description in the description field), I can now successfully complete the exercise. Before doing these two things the subscription would not work. I had tried over 10 times and kept getting that same error however I now cannot replicate the error by reversing my two steps so I cannot explain this.

Overall the book to me seems very rushed and poorly edited. I am hoping I can pass the 70-621 upgrade exam with this book and the 70-620 but I think I will most likely have to supplement this with another in depth book on Vista as this book is very lacking in my opinion.

The hardware requirements are extensive, a machine running Vista Business or above, a Server 2003 machine and a blank machine to install Vista on using the WAIK. However the instructions to create the WAIK so far have failed to work. So I am still in the setup phase.

This book prepares you verry well for the exam. Its not a big book but its very concice and lets you practice most of the topics you read. The requirements to study for this book are to have a few virtual machines to setup up a local network with a server which has some server roles and few clients. Thats cool because in that way you practice like in the enterprise enviroment. The exercises are very well explained with just a few typos so far. I recomend to create vista virtual machines without sp1 cuz it uninstall the gpmc.msc console that you need to make some exercises. Overall its a very nice book to study, grab it.

This kit does a fantastic job of explaining all components of SQL Server 2005. The practice tests and questions are easy to use and very helpful. While the explanations may not go into in-depth detail, the present a good overview. i recommend this kit. a great value for the money.

I purchased this book after taking and passing the 70-620 Exam, figuring that another Microsoft Training Kit book would be of great value for my 70-622 exam. Nothing could be further from the truth; the book has a few instances of good and solid information but overall lacks substance, contains missing or inaccurate information on important topics and more importantly: spell check. I gave up verifying information contained within after the first 5 chapters.

I did pass the 70-622 exam but not because of the book, less than 30% of the questions from the exam could be found in this training kit. I recommend finding a different training guide for your certification endeavors or purchasing for the 15% off test voucher.

I passed 70-431 and turned right around to study for the next test. I used the Microsoft Press book for the last one and went with Microsoft on this test. I passed 70-443 on the first try, but read this book all the way through first. I did some of the hands-on examples, but I have a lot of experience with SQL Server 2005. I thought the book could have expanded more on Clustering and Partitioning. I found errors in the Chapter tests and other areas, so watch out. A lot of information was covered in 70-431 that is in this book. Don't get hung up on the repeat of information because you are taking all this information and taking a test over "Case Studies". The test will show you a company situation and then you must solve a problem. It is not just a "fact test" -- like "What is the Workgroup edition memory limit?" or something like that. There are a few chapters that I will reference, so this book will stay on my shelf.

My personal opinion this book should have been that last in series ...it has some repeated information i.e High Availabilty, High Protection architectures.. Ch8 : Failover Clustering being introduced first time in this book should have been give more pages and info. Some body who has done all practise in First book ( implementation and maintenance ..) don't need know or redo Mirroring, replication etc. Anyway the book has some important aspect in the first seven chapters which cannot be missed and being a simple DBA is not enough ..one need to know how the infrastructre go about...

I purchased this for the 70-431 training, and since it was a good deal for the remaining two books, I got this package. Thsi was not a weekend study guide for me, but a two week adventure. The book is a good read, especially with the authors' real world experience. I have used the information in my consulting practice, and it has paid dividends. With this book and other resources included, I scored 940 on the 70-431 test.

The kit provides the necessary tools to prepare for the exam. I'm a little disappointed with some of the rudimentary database topics covered (for example - T-SQL, Creating Tables). Someone preparing to be a certified DBA would already know most of this basic material. If they don't - it's a little late to start learning. However that seems to be status quo with most training kits out on the market.

Superb tri-pack for Microsoft SQL Server 2005 DBAs. It is almost you have to know to provide serious MS SQL server 2005 administration and maintenance.

This book is very good in the fact that it steps you through real world examples. The examples in this book can be used for the real world work place.

Some of the many examples from the ground up are Clustering, Database Mirroring, Log Shipping and much more.

It helped me so much for the Exam 70-443.

Good stuff!

The book lack illustration and examples. From a point of view it does prepared you for the exams, however, there is nothing new in compared to others programs.

I think it's a smartbuy set because of trial 180 day SQL 2005 and well written books. I guess the only thing you need before the start - is some previous experience with SQL Server.

I have just finished the 70-431 book. The book is fairly well written, however, it is a full of errors! 8 Pages of corrections so far. It would have been nice if the authors/editors had tried the exercises at least.
I don't believe reference books should be like OS's that need a service pack in order to get through the written practice's. A little quality control would have done wonders!

Nice package that includes all you need to pass the exams.

In case you need to learn more advanced aspects of using SQL in advanced situations, perhaps you should choose another book.

More practice questions would be nice.

I am going through the first of the exam and have found this to be an excellent resource and covers more than just passing the exam as each new topic is coverred with step by step guide for self learning.
The contents and scope is also great.
Highly recommended for people wanting to pass as well as learn the concepts

I've only gone through the first of the books in the kit so far, but found it to be an excellent source of information for coming up to speed on SQL Server 2005.

I've only gone through the first of the books in the kit so far, but found it to be an excellent source of information for coming up to speed on SQL Server 2005.

Pretty good coverage on measuring and troubleshooting server performance and query performance. Good chapter on index optimization and maintenance. This book also covers replication and security well. All in all, a valuable reference that will also help you pass the exam.

Pretty good coverage on measuring and troubleshooting server performance and query performance. Good chapter on index optimization and maintenance. This book also covers replication and security well. All in all, a valuable reference that will also help you pass the exam.

It's helpful for the exam 70-443. I passed the perfect score.

Van

It's helpful for the exam 70-443. I passed the perfect score.

Van