Microsoft SQL Server(tm) 7.0 Performance Tuning Technical Reference

I wish all books were written this well.Great job.

I have been tuning SQL Server databases for some time, and have not seen such a good reference short of the Inside SQL Server series originated by Ron Soukup.I strongly recomend this book for everyone creating or maintaining an enterprise database.

Definitely not another Books Online. I bought this book to better understand hardware requirements for VLDB systems (1+Terabytes)... the book explains in great depth all vital hardware components in a system (RAID levels, CPU, RAM)... not just what is best but why, and the dynamics of how each component functions. The Sizing and Capacity Planning section was also great, as it gave mathematical equations for calculating system statistics... equations I had not seen before. I did not find the performance monitoring section especially helpful - although the book did make good suggestions about charting db performance over time.

I have been very satisfied with "Inside SQL Server" for so long, and have been keeping it by my desk. However, this one is more focused on Performance Tuning. You can find things from planning your hardware until tuning your Datawarehouse in here. Lastly, if you want to know about the detail architecture of SQL Server, get "Inside SQL Server". If you want to focus on Performance Tuning, this is the best book so far. I will keep both of them by my desk.