 | Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com This is not an ordinary SQL Server Book. SQL Server MVP Deep Dives brings together the world's most highly-regarded SQL Server experts to create a masterful collection of tips, techniques, and experience-driven best practices for SQL Server development and administration. These SQL Server MVPs-53 in all-each selected a topic of great interest to them, and in this unique book, they share their knowledge and passion with you. SQL Server MVP Deep Dives is organized into five parts: Design and Architecture, Development, Administration, Performance Tuning and Optimization, and Business Intelligence. Within each part, you'll find a collection of brilliantly concise and focused chapters that take on key topics like mobile data strategies, Dynamic Management Views, or query performance. The range of subjects covered is comprehensive, from database design tips to data profiling strategies for BI. Additionally, the authors of this book have generously donated 100% of their royalties to support War Child International. War Child International is a network of independent organizations, working across the world to help children affected by war. War Child was founded upon a fundamental goal: to advance the cause of peace through investing hope in the lives of children caught up in the horrors of war. War Child works in many different conflict areas around the world, helping hundreds of thousands of children every year. Visit www.warchild.org for more information. |
Average Customer Rating:  Technically illuminating and human readable. I agree with the other reviewers here, this is an exceptional book. I love the format - 50 some different essays on specific SQL Server topics. It works for me. I want to keep up with things but I don't have it in me to read an 800 page SQL Server book every month. I can read a 15 page essay about a particular topic though. Plus, the book covers a wide variety of material, from basic design ideas to the SQL CE, XML, BI, PowerShell, amongst many others.
What I've read has been clearly written and insightful. It's actually pleasant to read.
Highly recommended. SQL Server MVP Deep Dives: Highly Recommended I didn't buy this book the day it came out because despite the fact that all 53 of the contributors are SQL Server MVPs (indeed some of the the world's leading experts and practitioners), I wondered if the fact that there were so many authors, it might mean the chapters would be just 'sound bites' with only a moderate amount of interesting content.
I could not have been more wrong! In fact, it is the complete opposite. Over the last 4 weeks, I've learnt something significant and useful each time I've picked this book up, either directly about SQL Server or one of the associated technologies. I challenge you to pick this book up, open it at random and read a couple of pages, and not learn something useful.
The blurb states "This is no ordinary SQL Server book" and it's not. There are insights and practical know-how that are the result of years of real-world experience working with SQL Server.
The book is divided into 5 sections, broadly divided into the 5 job roles based around SQL Server:
1. Database Design and Architecture
2. Database Development
3. Database Administration
4. Performance Tuning and Optimisation
5. BI Development
The 59 chapters cover material for newcomers and pros, developers and DBAs alike, including some of the new features of SQL Server 2008.
Purchasing the hard copy book, also gets you bonus access to a free pdf version of the book. [The authors of this book have donated 100% of their royalties to support War Child International]
An excellent book, and I'm glad I bought it. Highly recommended.
$12K for WarChild On behalf of the 53 MVPs who collaberated on the SQL Server MVP Deep Dives book , I'm pleased to say thank you to the many who have purchased the book. Together we have raised $12,400 for [...].
If you haven't yet purchased the book, you should: no other tech book is such a win/win proposition. 100% of the author royalties goes helps children traumatized by war, you get 59 great chapters, and MVPs got to share their expertise in a collaborative effort.
[...].
[....].
Very good details on top of Your SQL server knowledge When You try to learn something to a deeper level, a book like this is good to get.
Not trying to reach everything, but going the step extra on selected areas.
I for one appreciated this book. Wow! Wow! Actually this could be the whole review, but I guess it does need some elaboration. This book is bound to become a classic just like Ken England's book on performance of SQL 2000 used to be, or the Inside Microsoft SQL Server series is now.
It does not happen that often that I keep postponing all but the pressing task at work to read yet another chapter. Can someone be called an SQL addict? This book may well make you one. So I've tried to get to the bottom of it and understand what is it that they have done so right. It is not only that the book is written by people who know what they are writing about, and that they display the essence of various topics which most of us have accumulated only through reading many other sources. Here it is all distilled and presented in one single volume of 59 chapters. But more than that, it seems that they have found the ultimate golden ratio in the size of the chapters, roughly between 8 to 13 pages, so that each can be covered in one short read without distraction. Almost like reading a collection of short stories by Edgar Allan Poe or William Somerset Maugham.
Have you ever spent time going through the 1204 trace flag deadlock graphs and then made the transition to the new trace flag 1222? Here it is, explained clearly without the need to go to BOL or the web. The benefits of a covering index? Which DMVs to use? Even the absurdity of using a shrink database task in a maintenance plan (why do they offer such a thing in the first place?). It is all here. The range of topics is impressive.
I have to admit I have not read more than a seventh of the book (only got it two days ago), jumping from one topic to another, having to balance what I am interested in most, and what would immediately be applicable to my current work, but even without a FULLSCAN there is little doubt that this volume will be enthusiastically received by developers and DBAs across the globe.
|  |
Select button not working? 
