SQL Server 2000: A Beginner's Guide (Book/CD-ROM)

As a senior DBA, I like to bring on board minions once in awhile to do some of the menial work. First, I make sure they have had least worked with an RDBMS before, whether it be something puny like Access or MySQL in a classroom context. Then I give them this book and tell them to read through Chapter 11. If they understand at least the first part of the book, they're a keeper. If they're still clueless, I let them go eventually. The beginning of the book is well written for anybody with brains and motivation to understand. As for the topics in the rest of the book, they're better off doing what I do, which is go online to one of the many SQL Server DBA sites.

So, the boss called me up one day and said, "Your team has to learn SQL Server 2000." I said, "How long do we have?" She answered, "How fast can you do it?" After tooling around the store, I chose this book and we bought three copies. In one week, we were all functional in SQL Server (with background in SQL and relational databases already there). That's a good deal.So, I recommended it to others in our company who need to learn more about relational databases, or more about SQL or more about SQL Server 2000. The experience has been universally good. It may not be deep (my only downgrade) but it is specific.I think the author managed to give just enough explanation about relational databases without going too deep. As a data purist, I might argue that more is better on this subject. However, I am responsible for training one group that does the same SQL over and over again, and that makes me aware that not everyone has to reach genius level on data.Good job!

Definitely not for the complete beginner. If you have an idea about what a database is and what you want out of your database then this is a great book. My experience with databases is fairly minimal, but I had some experience prior to reading this book because I built a web application that used Access on the back end. I understood database structure and had a context to read the book, so when I would read about something I would think to myself how I could use that information. Without this frame of reference, I would have been lost and this book would have been abysmal.That said, for me this book was an excellent read. I LOVED this book. I found no significant errors in the book (a small typo here or there). I used it to prepare for the Microsoft class on Desiging and Imlementing a Database Design using SQL Server 2000. I am a network engineer by trade and was afraid that I would be left behind in this class, so I needed to get up to speed quickly. This book provided huge amounts of clear and concise information to me in a very short time, and in the class I was probably the most knowledgeable student (not bad for a network engineer in a room full of DBAs and web programmers). In fact, there were multiple occasions where the information I learned in this book let me answer questions in the class that the instructor could not, and I also pointed out several instances where my instructor was just plain wrong. In summary, if you have some sort of database experience using a different product, this will get you up to speed very quickly on the vast majority of the aspects of SQL Server 2000. I commend the author on his writing style. I would have given it 5 stars if the audience for the book was more clearly defined by the title or the back page.