Pro SQL Server 2005 Database Design and Optimization

I'll keep it short and simple, it's worth the price. It will allow you to make the jump from Application Developer to DBA.

What can I say? This book gives me exactly what I needed. I'm a self-taught DB guy and this book filled in a lot of holes in knowledge.

I highly recommend this book to anyone working with SQL Server 2005. The material presented is made more understandable (not to mention entertaining!) by the examples used by the author throughout the book. The new features for SQL Server 2005 that the author covers are very relevant to my job, especially Chapter 7, Securing Access to the Data. The continuity of the material presented is excellent. Each chapter serves as a reference guide to complex topics that the author successfully explains through a combination of expertise, experience and a sense of humor.

I have the 2000 version of this book, which I thought was outstanding. Not only does it have excellent content, but it's written as if you were sitting at a table talking to Mr. Davidson directly. This updated version should be a staple on any database developer or administrator's bookshelf. There is a solid discussion of design, securing the database (new encryption capabilities of 2005) and much more. But these aren't the reasons why you should own this book. It is as much a "how-to" book as it is a "what-to" book. You get real advice, not just screenshots and step-by-step examples. I wish more books were written this way, as technical knowledge without a procedural "framework" is a recipe for disaster. Do yourself a favor and make the investment. Personally I know that any custom database design course I teach from this point on will include this book as reference for my students.

If you need to learn how to design a SQL Server database the right way, from the bottom up (or top down, depending on your persective), you can do no better than this book. The book starts with a solid introduction/refersher on basic database concepts, which brings the reader up to the required level to start thinking about issues such as normalization and data integrity -- extremely important issues if you value your data! Past there, the book gets deep (very deep) into data modeling, including discussions of such important concepts as when to use surrogate keys, what kind of data constraints should be defined, and the increasingly important question of how best to secure your data. The book closes with a few specialized, more advanced chapters, which I found to be especially interesting. These include a chapter on concurrency, "code-level architectural decisions" (really, best practices for writing great T-SQL), and finally a VERY useful chapter on database interoperability -- a must for those who have to make SQL Server talk to other DBMSs. In short, I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn to be a great SQL Server database designer.