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 enlarge | Authors: Itzik Ben-gan, Lubor Kollar, Dejan Sarka
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Category: Book
List Price: $44.99
Buy New: $25.56
You Save: $19.43 (43%)
New (32) Used (10) from $24.88
Avg. Customer Rating:  29 reviews
Sales Rank: 19769
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 632
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.7
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 6.9 x 1.6
ISBN: 0735623139
Dewey Decimal Number: 005.7565
EAN: 9780735623132
ASIN: 0735623139
Publication Date: April 26, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Not a handy reference book September 18, 2007
6 out of 11 found this review helpful
Coming from an Oracle shop over to a MSS shop I was looking for a book that would provide me with the features of T-SQL, as well as act as a handy reference. The book is likely good as a teaching resource, albeit the English usage is horrible. As a quick reference, though, it's less handy than navigating the M$ online resources.
A must for every MSS dba's desk? Nah. Not even close. I have a doctorate in MIS and this is exactly the kind of convoluted writing that makes practitioners wince when they see someone with a Ph.D.
 A Timely Release & A Great Resource September 17, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book fits perfectly between SQL Books Online and the deeper T-SQL Programing books. For me the detailed theory of operation behind how T-SQL runs queries and making note of that flow as it applies to each type of query through out the book makes it all "Click".
If this is your style too and you don't want to just copy and tweak queries THIS is the book for you.
very very good book August 26, 2007
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Deep inside the way sqlserver compile and compute the tsql
very good for semi - new users
Tal g
 Great resource for your SQL bookshelf August 4, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
If you want to take your basic SQL skills to the next level, this offers great examples of how to do it. I'm mentoring a group of new SQL developers and have loaned this book out for weeks at a time. Makes my job easier!
Useful but COULD be much better. Needs major editorial intervention. July 26, 2007
15 out of 18 found this review helpful
Real quick:
1. Target reader: someone with a good grasp of the 2000 Server wishing to learn the new stuff that came with the 2005 server (there's a lot: the 2005 product is _much_ better than the previous). This is probably the only thing that's unequivocally good about this book.
2. Content: Mostly about tables (joins, logical operations, physical operations, aggregates, a bit of esoterica -- puzzles, hierarchies, stuff like that, just a bit at the end). No CLR to speak of in this volume (there's a tiny bit in the secton on user-defined aggregates; much more of it in the other volume, Programming). This book _should_ be considered the first volume of the two-volume set. If you get this one, you'll get the other one too; neither tome is self-sufficient; in fact there's a lot of explicit interdependence.
3. Very clean technically: technical editing very good (no typos either).
4. Depth vs breadth: the book is more extensive than deep. Some people here say it's difficult -- and it is true, which unfortunately brings me to the next point:
5. Writing: ABHORRENT. That's why it seems difficult -- and it very much is, except it's not due to any kind of inherent difficulty of the subject matter. It's the authors' complete, laughable inability to use the English language to explain things that makes reading this book such a chore. There is also conceptual muddle (people write as they think).
Now, experience taught me to forgive literary incapacity to a _technical_ author (to a degree; and I do take notice and, if possible, avoid him in the future). In cases like that I put the blame squarely on the publisher, especially if otherwise I know the publisher to be solid. The book's front matter lists Roger Leblanc as the copy editor of this book: Roger Leblanc, you get an F; as a man of honour you gotta kill yourself now. The book is full of unimaginable, fantastic garbage of every possible kind, from a massive amount of grating usage errors to a pervasive lack of unity, coherence, and logical connectedness on the page/paragraph level, to a frequent lack of the overall unity: it's clear that an editor never touched it. When I bought this book and read the first chapter I was so p-off I almost sent it back (I got as far as getting an RMA from Amazon). I did keep it though.
Do I recommend this book? It has been useful to me, so -- with great reservation, and only to the right reader -- yes, kinda. And please check out what else is available (there's tons of books on the 2005 server these days). The Querying book is part of the three-volume update and extension of the server-2000 version by Delaney. Delaney's server-2000 book was extremely useful and quite decently written. I wish they let her write the new version, even though it's now three moderately sized books instead of a single huge one, and it's probably difficult for one person to do it all.
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