Microsoft SQL Server 2005: A Beginner''s Guide

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.

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.

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!

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