Accelerated SQL Server 2008
On July - 14 - 20105 COMMENTS
Product Description
The expert tuition and approach to rapid learning in Accelerated SQL Server 2008, one of the first SQL Server 2008 books available, will enable SQL Server and other database professionals to make the leap to the latest release of Microsoft’s flagship database management system quickly. Take full advantage of the new features of SQL Server 2008, know what tools are available, and quickly realize the power and ease of use that SQL Server 2008 has to offer. Ligh… More >>
I Know What I Saw
Arrived weeks earlier than was estimated and received very nice personal email from James Fox : )
Rating: 5 / 5
This book simply describes in detail some of the new features in the 2008 version of SQL. Not an adequate book if you’re looking for a more complete book on SQL Servers
Rating: 2 / 5
I needed to get up to speed fast with SQL 2008 as we are migrating our entire infrastructure to windows 2008 products, this book helped me do it. There are many changes in SQL 2008 from new data types, high availability improvements, admin scripting with powershell, my favorite is intellisence is finally in the query windows. This book explained the newly redone reporting services well. It is nothing like the Reporting services in 2005. Good explanations of the new policy management feature in SQL 2008, as well as the linq to SQL. As a first book out of the gate it is a good overview. It allowed me to get my SQL 2000 and 2005 servers up to 2008 with minimal headache. Now we can concentrate on exploiting the new features.
Rating: 5 / 5
I find myself referring to this book in the hopes that there is a section on my problem of the day. The mark of a good book is that the item I’m interested in appears in the index, and is explained to me by the author.
Unfortunately this book keeps disappointing me in this respect. I find that I look for information on common tasks (bcp, for instance, is a common sql server task for users and all this has is a screenshot of a command window with a bcp command typed in!) and find what looks like a checklist answer… “yep, bcp still exists!” with no depth or explanation of why it should be there.
I feel like this book is mostly a feature list and that for my work it was a mistake.
-Peter
Rating: 2 / 5
I saw this book come out, and had high expectations. The authors are all great guys who really know their stuff. What’s more, Donald Farmer is _the_ guy for Data Mining, so I was hoping for a big section about the improvements in that area for SQL 2008.
Looking through it though, it feels like a book that was written for SQL 2005 that just got updated a little for SQL 2008, and that wasn’t what I was wanting. And to boot, there are things that are just plain missing. There’s not a single page on Data Mining, and some of my favourite features just don’t appear. For Xmpl, in the FOR XML section, there’s no mention of FOR XML PATH at all – which has to be the best way of using FOR XML.
However, I will still recommend this book. I will recommend this book to people who are moving from SQL 2000 and want to know what’s new in both SQL 2005 and 2008, but there is a better reason again:
It’s really honest! It’s written by Microsoft guys, and they give really frank opinions about things. There are times when they happily point out that one feature or another isn’t really as useful as it sounds. It’s the kind of thing that more books need.
Rating: 4 / 5