Book Review: Inside SQL Server 2000 (MS Press)

Category:

Database

Type:

Applications

Difficulty:

Intermediate

Author: Intelligent Solutions Inc.

Version Compatibility: Visual Basic 6, Visual Basic 5

Instructions: Copy the declarations and code below and paste directly into your VB project.

Declarations:
' (None)

Code:

If you are a SQL Server 2000 DBA or a developer serious optimizing your SQL Server applications, Inside SQL Server 2000 is a book you will want to have handy. That being said, it is disappointing in one respect -- it does not, as you might think from the title, deal much with the new features in SQL Server 2000.

Based on what the book does cover (and it is a lot), it is excellent. This is not surprising, given that the author of the original edition of the book, Ron Soukup, runs the SQL Server development team for Microsoft, and the author of the current edition (the third) has been teaching and writing about the product since 1991. We get detailed coverage of the product's architecture, how to install it, backup and recovery, indices, and programming with Transact-SQL -- including use of functions, stored procedures, transactions, triggers, and cursors. There is excellent and detailed coverage of optimization and performance tuning, including locking, concurrency issues, and preventing and resolving deadlock problems. Also included are two CDs with an evaluation copy of SQL Server 200, sample code and scripts, white papers, a benchmarking kit, and a complete Transact-SQL reference in MS-Word format.

The books is essentially a detailed reference on the core features of SQL Server 2000. All of the content is clear and detailed. One of its strongest points is that its goes into a lot of detail about the product's architecture for those who are interested, yet it also can be used as a quick reference. For example, the chapter on indices examines the layout of data in index pages in detail, and if you are able to get through this material, you will gain an enhanced understanding of how indices improve performance and when to use them. But because of the chapter's organization and headers, it is easy to use it as a quick reference on how to create different types of indices using Transact-SQL statements.

For these reasons, I believe that any database developer and/or DBA who has not completely mastered SQL Server (given the scope of the product, almost everybody) would benefit to some degree from the book. For someone like myself, an applications developer who relies to a significant extent on Transact-SQL and dabbles in database administration, it is extremely helpful.

As mentioned, the book's major disappointment is its failure to adequately cover the product's new features. For instance, there is no mention of XML, federated servers, clustering, or Analysis Services. A less misleading title for this book would have been Inside SQL Server, since most of it also applies to SQL Server 7.0, and the parts that apply only to 2000 (such as named instances and INSTEAD OF triggers) are marked as such. There is good coverage of Full-Text Indexing, a feature that was added starting with SQL Server 7 but was not covered at all in the previous version of the book, Inside SQL Server 7.0. Based on this, I would guess that the next book in this series will have more on SQL Server 2000's new features.

Nonetheless, if you are a SQL Server DBA or developer, my recommendation of this book is practically unqualified. In her preface, the author acknowledges that the book does not cover all the features of SQL Server 2000 and is not a new features guide or upgrade book. Noting that this is the reason for most of the few negative comments from readers about the book's previous editions, she comments that it is as if those readers "were seeing the cup as half-empty rather than half-full." I'd agree (except I'd say that the cup is a lot more than half-full) -- if you use SQL server day in and day out, you will not find a better reference.