SQL Server 2000 Stored Procedure Programming

As a software developer with many years of hands-on experience, I continually need to upgrade my skills as efficently as possible. What I value most in a book is how clearly it explains the concept and practice of a particular subject, thus allowing me to quickly get my hands on it to discover its nuances and idiosyncrasies.I found this book to be very logically organized, thorough in its coverage of most subjects without going into nauseating detail and, most importantly, clearly written. I have written numerous stored procedures in SQL Server 6.5 and Sybase 10.0, yet managed to learn interesting facts about TSQL.Based on reading this book, I am progressing nicely in my initial work with SQL Server 2000. The explanation of user functions was clear and concise, yet detailed enough for me to understand why they are useful and how they are created. The book provided enough detail about most of the SQL Server 2000 TSQL capabilities to begin working with them.I feel that the authors strike a nice balance between thoroughness and detail. It read easily and quickly from cover to cover, without ever becoming bogged down in myriad details that won't be useful unless the reader is addressing a specific problem in the real world.

Sunderic and Woodhead have written a gem of a book that can earn on place on almost every SQL Server 2000 developer's bookshelf, if not desk. Whether you are an experienced developer new to SQL Server, or an old hand upgrading to 2000, SQL Server 2000 Stored Procedure Programming will introduce you to the features you need to know about. The writing style is clear and easy to read, and the explanations clear, concise and comprehensive.The book starts with 3 chapters on the basics of SQL Server 2000. While not strictly necessary in a book aimed at developers merely upgrading to SQL Server 2000, it does ensure that the book is accessible to a broad range of developers. I believe any developer with a year or two of experience with SQL can pick up this book and get full value from it. However, even experienced developers should read these chapters; some of SQL Server 2000's new features are first explained here.Then we progress steadily into more detail of the SQL Server 2000 environment. The role of stored procedures in a scalable, high-volume environment is outlined along with an explanation of the tools available for designing, building and maintaining them. The TSQL language is outlined and the proper roles of batches, scripts and transactions is detailed. Throughout these chapters the new features of SQL Server 2000 are described, and their effect on recommended practices provided. Professional habits of error handling, debugging, and source-code management are described. Through a full and detailed understanding of the parts, we prepare to understand the whole. The real meat of the book is chapters 9 through 11. Almost a third of the text is here, discussing Stored Procedures, Triggers, and User-Defined Functions; Locking Strategies, Dynamic Queries, Nested Stored Procedures, and Use of Identity Values; COM and Web Interfacing, Job Administration, Email, Database Deployment, and Security; all of these and more are discussed in sufficient detail to provide a good grounding in their capabilities and limitations. Throughout these chapters, as for the entire book, the emphasis remains on professional practices and usages that demonstrate how to write "code for the ages". Code that will scale well; code that is easy to read, diagnose, and repair when problems arise.The book concludes with an excellent chapter on XML support in SQL Server 2000. It starts with a summary of XML, DFDs and Schemas, and Style Sheets, sufficient to allow a reader new to XML at least follow along with the discussion. Then it goes into details of why and how to receive recordsets from SQL Server 200 in XML, so as to facilitate publication to The Web or an intranet. The ease with which customization, and translation into HTML, can be accomplished is readily apparent from the authors' explanation. Any developers new to XML, who desires to easily publish database content, will find this chapter an invaluable introduction.A consistent thread through the book is "Profes

As a consultant, I occasionally meet and work with talented individuals who have the natural ability to unfold complex problems into manageable sections and explain them in simple and understandable terms. The authors of this book successfully achieve this status. This book caters to all users, from beginners to experts. It includes lots of tips, tricks and pitfall warning notes for the casual user right through to intense documentation for the seasoned pro. The authors do a wonderful job of unraveling the complexities of Stored Procedures through simple and concise examples for real world applications.Thorough coverage of the SQL Server Environment will help even the novice to quickly harness the power of SQL Server and turn it into a productivity tool. The concepts are easy to follow with step by step instructions and documented results. There are lots of examples and screen shots to support the authors' theories and help illustrate stored procedure behaviours.Finally, a book that explains how to debug Stored Procedures using available tools and techniques which the average reader can access. This book will help beginners journey through the complexities of SQL Server and Stored Procedures. The Sample Asset tracking database is a much needed alternate to PUBS and gives the reader a fresh perspective on database design. The chapters on Advanced Stored Procedure Programming and XML Documentation are excellent features of this book.The authors do an exemplary job of presenting structured programing techniques and encourage readers to follow industry standard practices. The authors have left virtually no stone unturned in their quest for thoroughness in explaining and documenting the features and flexibility of Stored Procedures. This book belongs on the desk of every serious developer and DBA. It is a wonderful reference book and a source of many solutions to those nagging problems that cause too many of us to lose sleep and our hair.

I have been looking for a book like this for two years. This is the first book I've found that goes beyond the usual trivial stored procedure examples with one or two select and/or insert statements. It has everything I need - loops, conditional execution, error handling, debugging, dynamic queries. And the sample database has some great, real-world examples of very complex stored procedures.

Everybody's talking about XML these days and now even SQL Server supports it. This book has a great introduction to XML for DBAs-everything you ever wanted to know about tags, elements, attributes, DTDs, schemas and XPath, but were afraid to ask. After introducing XML, the authors go on to describe how Microsoft has implemented it in SQL Server, and how you can use it to build simple Web applications for querying databases and returning recordsets as XML or processing/parsing information received as an XML string. The authors also promise to cover updategrams and SOAP on their Web site (trigonblue.com) as soon as information becomes available.