The book itself is not bad. However not getting the accompanying materials is a major pain. Instead of an accompanying CD, they tell you to go to a web-site to download the materials. Except the materials are not on the web-site - there is no way to contact them about it - just a general runaround. MAJOR PROBLEM!!!

The cd is missing the code from book.
The author/publisher is ignoring my email.

I cannot believe how much you get for your money with this book. Very informative.

This book becomes useless on page 5 where it begins to reference sample code that is not provided. After registering my purchase with Safari and Addison -Wesley and reporting the problem, I was deluged with daily "reminders" to upgrade to a paid service. In all farness I should report I received a forwarded email from Safari in which the author states he would like to provide me with the missing code. That was months ago. Gee, do you think I ever received the code? In the meantime, the automated emails continue. This book is trash from a trash publisher. The other reviewers obviously did not read this book or they did not try to reconcile its contents with the propriety code that would make sense of it.

SQLAuthority.com Book Review :
SQL Server 2005 Practical Troubleshooting: The Database Engine (SQL Server Series) (Paperback)
by Ken Henderson

Short Review :
Database Administrators can use this book on a daily basis in SQL Server 2005 troubleshooting and problem solving. Answers to SQL issues can be swiftly located using the index of this book.This book covers the topics and subjects which any other books, blogs or websites (including MSDN, BOL) do not cover. This book provides DBAs with solutions which can be used by user in highly dynamic environments to resolve common and specialized problems. This book tells user what to do when something goes wrong with SQL Server 2005. This book is an edge case, but is something that can make the difference between a SQL Server application meeting customer needs and it going down in flames. This book is a good place to begin troubleshooting expedition.

Detail Review :
This book will not teach you basic T-SQL from basic and it is not easy and interesting training text book. This book is more like guide to save the troubled time. This book must be read by all the DBA before hand to know what kind of bad (worst!) situation can arise and how this book can be used to prevent the situation or fix it if it has already happened. The authors obviously knows the product very well from inside out, many of the authors are working for Microsoft or MVP. The authors communicate the the topic very well, many places there is lots of code dump, however that is appropriately justified looking at the content covered in the book and direction of the topic taken in the book. The Authors unveils the secretes of SQL Server 2005 internals. We can easily understand how the SQL Server 2005 is working, which helps when something goes wrong.

This book contains many interesting topics. Regular readers of my blog knows that my favorite subject is data corruption and recovery and server crashes and other critical failures. I enjoy writing and researching SQL Server errors and their resolution. It is extremely important to know the common errors and their solution. This book covers errors in depth and in detail. This book tries to cover many subjects in 480 pages, which makes sometime book little heavy to read.

The book covers complex subject very easily and in simple words. For example,
"Last Known Good - When was the last time DBCC CHECKDB reported no errors for this database? SQL Server 2005 saves in the database information about the last time a DBCC CHECKDB was run without errors on the database."
"Run DBCC FREEPROCCACHE. This clears the procedure cache of any cached plans that are not currently in use."
"No matter how accurate the planning or estimate is, you might still run out of space in production. The best practice here is to set up the SQLDiag service to constantly monitor the production system and take action before you run out of space."

This book comes up with CD which contains some useful software (SQL Nexus; TraceBuster, DataDemon) and sample code of the book. I have yet to try the software myself.

Rating : 4 and 1/2 stars

In Summary, This should be a standard book on most DBA's desktops.

Pinal Dave
Principal Database Administrator
[...]

This book contains articles and code examples that are very handy, especially to those of us who are transitioning from SQL 2000 to SQL 2005. I am a fairly new DBA and have much to learn, but this book opened the door to some more advanced topics (index statistics and execution plans for example) and described the differences between how SQL 2K and SQL 2005 handle the same issues. Highly recommended.

The book is well written, contains lots of description for troubleshooting of complex problems. I think the book is one of "better to have" for every good MSSQL DBA.
I like sections about memory management, query optimizator, backup and recovery - and every chapter in the book contains lots of valuable information.
Also the book written in good and easy to understand English - there are no (or few) of complex grammatic which may make reading hard for foreigners.

The book is well written, contains lots of description for troubleshooting of complex problems. I think the book is one of "better to have" for every good MSSQL DBA.
I like sections about memory management, query optimizator, backup and recovery - and every chapter in the book contains lots of valuable information.
Also the book written in good and easy to understand English - there are no (or few) of complex grammatic which may make reading hard for foreigners.

This excellent book on SQL Server 2005 was published about a month ago by Addison Wesley. It is edited by Ken Henderson, and has chapters by Bart Duncan, Slava Oks, Wei Xiao, among others. Slava does a great job covering memory management, while Bart Duncan has very good coverage about Procedure Cache issues and Cesar Galindo-Legaria does a wonderful job covering Query Processor issues.

Very, very highly recommended! I've been reading it cover to cover on my daily train commutes.

As the editor Henderson says in his Preface, this book is perhaps a little more specialised than his "Guru's Guide to SQL Server Architecture". That book was generally applicable to anyone coding SQL Server, while the current book is about what troubles might occur. Where these are expected [hopefully] to be fairly infrequent. The chapters are written by different contributors and touch on key aspects of the database. Each chapter can be read in isolation of the others.

Of these, the chapter on server crashes and other critical failures might be the most important to some readers. Where maybe it is not so much the efficiency of how your SQL Server operates, but that it must run continuously. The chapter describes how an error log is made, and how to read its contents. As you'd expect, each entry is timestamped. You are walked through the standard startup sequence. Fairly intricate, reflecting the complexity of SQL Server itself. Multiple threads are associated with a normal run, and several databases are read - for the system and for the users. The chapter also warns you to only use the SQL Configuration Manager in order to change the parameters of the SQL services. As contrasted to using an alternative method which can cause errors. Here it seems implicitly that Microsoft erred in permitting that alternative to be even feasible. This warning should not be needed.