Programming SQL Server 2005: Prepare for Deeper SQL Server Waters

This book covers nearly all topics on SQL Server programming. It begins with the differences between the SQL Server 2000 and 2005. 2005 has new tools (SSMS, Profiler, BIDS, command line), data types, xml support, and .NET integration. Chapters 1-4 go over these topics in turn. The next series shows the reader how to program using the Visual Studio IDE, deal with XML programming, and web services (Chaptes 5-8). Chapters 9-14 are on programming SQL Server management and reporting tools plus interfacing with the objects exposed by SQL Server through .NET. The remaining chapters are on programming services: SS agent, intergrations services, broker, notification services, and analysis services. The book is quite thourough and has a large number of examples, code, and pictures for each topic. The book is generally easy to read and well indexed. Programmers will feel right at home with all the extra help provided by the book. Folks who have no programming experience of any kind will likely struggle with the information in the book. Basic SQL is shown but not explained. It is clear the book is meant for people programming and/or automating SQL Server topics rather than just running basic queries. That being said, the chapter on XML was very helpful even from just a querying point of view. Using XML as a bulk load technique was particuarly useful and turned out to be very fast when loading text based data to the server. Querying XML data was covered by using both FOR XML statements and using XQuery type statements. The chapter sovering SSIS was also very useful as there is not much material on SSIS yet. This book is a must have for SQL Server DBAs, programmers, and professionals.

Having never written C# or C++ or DMO, I was able to quickly read parts of this book and successfully create a C# program using SMO/RMO to create my transactional / merge replication republishing environment. I had little experience using Visual Studio. I've been focused on T-SQL for SQL development for the past 8 years as a development DBA. When I looked for a book to quickly bring me up to speed in SMO/RMO, I chose this book because it is explicit and gives great examples. I look forward to using it for Reporting and Notifications. It makes learning new SQL 2005 skills exciting!

This is a very good book. It is quite compact and does not waste time and pages on huge examples that would not make any sense at the end. The only issue, at least for me, is that it includes only the new features of the Sql Server. As a result if you are a beginner with SQL Server you need to buy an introductory book before you read this one.

This book is an easy-to-read tutorial on many of the new features of SQL Server 2005. It covers the expected topics, such as T-SQL Enhancements, HTTP Endpoints (Web Services), CLR Integration, and the XML data type. I was pleased to discover, however, that it also does a good job of explaining the often left-out features such as SQL Server Management Objects (SMO), SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS), and Analysis Services. (There are three chapters on SMO alone!) There is even a chapter on using SMO to program the SQL Server Agent service. That's an extra that I haven't seen before. One of the things that I really liked about this book was the writing style. Reading it didn't feel like a chore. I wound up reading a bit of it each night after work, in order to relax. This is fairly unusual for me, as I typically get more than enough exposure to SQL during the day. I was quite pleased with this book. I am a Microsoft Certified Trainer, and have been teaching classes on SQL Server 2005 for over a year. Therefore, I've seen numerous books and classes on SQL 2005. In my mind, this book stands out from the pack.

This book provides a clear, concise walkthrough about programming all aspects of SQL Server 2005. Numerous code samples are included that can be downloaded from the O'Reilly web site. The book contains excellent coverage of programming CLR routines, XML support, native Web services support, and SQL Server Management Objects (SMO) (which replaces DMO). I also found the sections about topics such as Notification Services, replication, Reporting Services, and Integration Services helpful. These topics are new to me and I now both understand them and have been able to program solutions. As a previous reviewer correctly mentioned, this book only covers new T-SQL features. I actually prefer this since I already know T-SQL (and there are already a lot of good T-SQL books available). The coverage of new T-SQL features is complete and the examples are good. This book includes an appendix that explains the new features of ADO.NET 2.0. The writing and examples are clear and helped me understand the changes and enhancements. It's great that the author chose to include this since programming ADO.NET 2.0 is related to programming SQL Server 2005 but not the same thing at all. Finally, I really like that this book does not simply recycle MSDN content, but rather complements it. There is enough reference material in the book to support the discussion and examples. After reading the book, you'll know enough about programming SQL Server 2005 to quickly find any reference material that you need in MSDN.