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Product Description
Database professionals will find that this new edition aids in mastering the latest version of Microsoft's SQL Server. Developers and database administrators (DBAs) use SQL on a daily basis in application development and the subsequent problem solving and fine tuning. Answers to SQL issues can be quickly located helping the DBA or developer optimize and tune a database to maximum efficiency.
Basic questions are easily located on the topics of filtering, sorting, operators, conditionals, pseudo columns, single row functions, joins, grouping functions, sub queries, composite queries, hierarchies, flashback queries, parallel queries, expressions and regular expressions. Assistance on DML, data types (including collections), XML, DDL for basic database objects such as tales, views and indexes, partitioning, and security is also considered.
* Identifies the most common issues DBAs face day to day for easy reference
*Provides DBAs with solutions actually used by the authors in enterprise environments to resolve common and specialized problems to optimization issues.
* Addresses issues that have been introduced by new features which can add more control but reduce performance.
Product Details
* Amazon Sales Rank: #661330 in Books
* Published on: 2007-04-13
* Original language: English
* Number of items: 1
* Binding: Paperback
* 520 pages
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Ken England is President and Founder of Database Technologies, a database consulting, product evaluation and training firm. A Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer and a Microsoft Certified Trainer, Ken England is widely regarded as an authority on SQL Server and other leading database products. He is also the author of the SQL Server 6.5 Performance Optimization and Tuning Handbook.
Gavin Powell, BSc. Comp.Sci., OCP (Oracle8i Certified Professional) has fifteen years of computer industry experience. Diverse experience in database administration and database development in both relational and object databases. Applications development experience is procedural and object-oriented. He also has some systems administration experience. His extensive consulting experience includes software vendors, internet .COM's (some unfortunately have met with their demise), accounting, banking, financial services, the travel industry, construction, retail, mining, shipping, education and general advisory capacity. Gavin Powell has worked with many software products, tools and programming languages. These tools include items in the list shown below. He has authored two successful books Oracle .High performance Tuning and the just released Oracle SQL
Customer Reviews
My name on the cover2
Up to this point, I have avoided reviewing this book because I don't like being negative, but this book has damaged Ken England's reputation and I would like to clear the air.
About 18 months ago the publishers offered me the opportunity to be technical editor for this new edition. I was flattered because I considered Ken's previous edition to be the best written on the subject. The publishers also requested my permission to reprint, on the back cover, a review I did of the previous edition. That tickled my ego as well.
After reading the draft, I was appalled at the gross errors of fact and, perhaps worse, the errors of omission in regard to the many important new performance tuning features of SQL Server 2005. I gave the publishers my opinion of the book and told them I could not be involved unless I could rewrite the new material entirely. They did not agree and found another technical editor.
To answer some of the points of contention in previous reviews of this book:
Despite the review from Adam Cassel questioning the truth of an assertion that Ken England did not write this edition, I can confirm that Ken England did not participate at all in the re-write of this book. He knew nothing about it until after it was published.
Gavin Powell did write the new material. His reply to the criticism in an earlier review is disingenuous. ("My most sincere and profuse apologies if you are finding things which are out of date. Please return the book to the retailer you purchased it from if it is too out of date.") He implies that the errors are leftovers from the previous edition that got overlooked in the update process. That is not true. Things are not "out of date", they are wrong and the errors are his.
I gave this book 2 stars instead of zero because Ken's core material is still in there and it is still worth reading. As soon as the previous version is out of print, this will be the only place you can find it.
Kurt
Ken England Not the Author?1
How can this be possible? I don't believe this story. Essentially, you are claiming, and by stating you know Ken and spoke to him that Ken is claiming, a man who has written two books, and is at least as smart as the average lawyer or publishing agent, was duped into a contract with a publisher, at some point contingent with, or subsequent to, writing one or both of his other books, that allowed his name to be used as the author of any forthcoming book the publisher wished to put out without his knowledge or permission and without his receiving any remuneration for said "rogue" book? That is total BS. There is something going on here, but it is not what you claim. I tell you, I think Ken needs to and owes people a full explaination of the circumstances surrounding this book if only to set things straight. If this is even remotely true, that his name was used without his knolwedge, permission, and that he is receiving no remuyneration for sales related to this book, he needs to make a comment here online as he can freely do. Elsewise, this is BS and Ken is in some way complicit in this fiasco or mythology you are creating.
Disapointment1
I found the book to be very disappointing. In the past I purchased the previous books for SQL Server 6.5 and SQL Server 2000. Both were excellent books, so when I saw that there is book for SQL Server 2005, I bought it immediately. Unfortunately I felt that this book is not as good as the previous books. The book is completely based on the 2000 version, with just few things that were added. It doesn't give you deep cover of many of the new tools and options that we have with SQL Server 2005 and sometimes it even writes about things that exist only for backwards compatibility with out even mentioning that there is a new way to get the information. For example - It gives a great explanation about DBCC Showcontig statement, and doesn't even mention the sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats DMV (If you look at BOL the first thing that it will write about DBCC showcontig is "This feature will be removed in a future version of Microsoft SQL Server. Avoid using this feature in new development work, and plan to modify applications that currently use this feature. Use sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats instead.").
One of the most important improvements of SQL Server 2005 was the Dynamic Management Views. The book hardly writes about the DMV. For example the book has a chapter about indexes. It didn't even mention sys.dm_db_index_XXXX and the sys.dm_db_missing_index_XXXX dynamic management views in that chapter. In my opinion if you write a chapter about indexes, you should include an explanation about those DMV.
Sometimes it even gives you completely wrong information. The explanation about set statistics xml is only 4 lines, saying that it just gives you the same information but in XML format (doesn't even says the same as what. Since this comes just after the explanation of set statistics time and set statistics io statements, I assume that the author meant those statements). In reality set statistics xml gives you much more information and it is one of the most important tools that we can use to optimize query.
While I wrote this review, I read 2 reviews saying that this book was not written by Ken England and Gavin Powell. I guess that this explains the hugh difference between there previous books and this book that just used there good reputation but apparently has nothing to do with them.
Adi
