Rating: 
Summary: a newly minted MCAD
Review: - This is a great book for studying and for reference around the office. I used it for the exam (and passed); my co-workers use it as a general reference at work.
- As usual, Que did a great job editing. I found two mistakes, but they were very minor.
- The sample questions / practice exam could use some re-working, but if you read this book through, the exam should not be too much hassle.
Rating: 
Summary: Good for exam and reference
Review: - This is a great book for studying and for reference around the office. I used it for the exam (and passed); my co-workers use it as a general reference at work.
- As usual, Que did a great job editing. I found two mistakes, but they were very minor.
- The sample questions / practice exam could use some re-working, but if you read this book through, the exam should not be too much hassle.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent SQL Server resource
Review: Despite the fact that I've worked with SQL Server since the days when the manual said "Sybase" (SQL is a spawn from Sybase), I am always amazed and delighted to find the pieces I still don't know. One of the benefits of studying for exams is that these tidbits become more relevant. Programming is a great field, because we can never get bored.This book assumes that you are a relative beginner, and the 70-229 test assumes both programming and administration knowledge. There is therefore a lot of ground to cover. Due to its Que Training Guide format, the information is properly chunked for digestability. The first 9 chapters talk to the programmer, the rest to the administrator. You need two learning styles to pass the exams: one for understanding and one for memorization. I not smart enough to do the second without the first. This Training Guide is an excellent resource for understanding SQL administration concepts. The fact is, the 70-229 is a moving target. I base this on the fact that all 70-229 books carry both programming and administration information, but the Microsoft "Skills Being Measured" focuses almost solely on programming skills. I think that one is well served by reading and truly understanding this book, but then getting the latest certification buzz before taking the exam.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent SQL Server resource
Review: Despite the fact that I've worked with SQL Server since the days when the manual said "Sybase" (SQL is a spawn from Sybase), I am always amazed and delighted to find the pieces I still don't know. One of the benefits of studying for exams is that these tidbits become more relevant. Programming is a great field, because we can never get bored. This book assumes that you are a relative beginner, and the 70-229 test assumes both programming and administration knowledge. There is therefore a lot of ground to cover. Due to its Que Training Guide format, the information is properly chunked for digestability. The first 9 chapters talk to the programmer, the rest to the administrator. You need two learning styles to pass the exams: one for understanding and one for memorization. I not smart enough to do the second without the first. This Training Guide is an excellent resource for understanding SQL administration concepts. The fact is, the 70-229 is a moving target. I base this on the fact that all 70-229 books carry both programming and administration information, but the Microsoft "Skills Being Measured" focuses almost solely on programming skills. I think that one is well served by reading and truly understanding this book, but then getting the latest certification buzz before taking the exam.
Rating:
Summary: Not bad
Review: I have just passed the exam with score 738. The exam was relatively difficult. I used the book to prepare along with MeasureUp exams. The book covers most of the areas needed for the exam but didn't go into enough details on security and performance optimization. Also you probably would need more practice with complex SELECT queries. (BTW, MeasureUp exam was almost completely useless).
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing...
Review: I was really happy with the 70-315 book from Que, especially the hands-on learning style. I was hoping for the same from this book. Several concepts are explained poorly or are superficial. The Step by Step excercises were so simple as to be useless (SELECT * FROM Customers). At times, the author made statements that are just plain wrong: "If two values are compared, the Boolean result is either positive, negative, or equal(greater than, less than, or equal to)." Another title for this book might be 'SQL Server 101: Read at your own risk'.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Que's best effort
Review: In the past, I used the QUE books by Kalani and the Transcender practice tests to gain my MCAD. I bought this book to help prepare for my next test (70-229) on the MCSD track, and I have been disappointed.
I come from a programming background, not a SQL Server Admin background. This book is light on the kind of detail that Microsoft tests for in their exams. I am extremely displeased with the sections on replication, SQL Server Profiler, database security and performance tuning.
Other sections such as the writing queries and stored procedure I found to be OK. But then again, most of my Sql Server experience has been in writing queries and stored procedures.
Maybe this would be a good study guide for experienced SQL Admins. I can't answer that question. I do feel that us programmers would be better served by not using this book as a preparation guide.
Rating:
Summary: Past the Test!
Review: Not bad! Has a good study outline and organisation with all required objectives of the test. Pretty good detailed examples in chapters, Review exercies a little weak, but review questions are good. Using this book, the Books On Line from the product and all the 70-299 example tests i could find on line, I past 70-229 test comfortably....
Rating:
Summary: Solid Guide, Watch the "Peripheral Details"
Review: The book does a nice job of interspersing just enough personality to keep you reading when you're about to "hit the wall" without reading like a "...for Dummies" book. The content seems to be well represented and explained well overall with the beginning (broad intro) and end (security, measuring, etc.) chapters a bit sketchy-but these generally seem the hardest to write meaningfully while being concise.
The organization is occasionally a bit off. There are a number of cases where the author discusses a concept and how it applies to certain objects, but has not yet covered those objects. Rather than referencing a later chapter, I'd prefer to see the core components discussed first then the additional features added on. As intertwined as topics can be, there may be no perfect answer, but I kept feeling like there might be a better one.
The first two chapters cover a lot of the necessary basics and details that likely won't be tested on directly. The final chapter deals with monitoring, troubleshooting and optimization--a broad and amorphous topic that despite more pages than any other chapter, leaves you feeling like you've learned a tenth of what is there. Much of it is probably more admin and less programmer so glossing over is somewhat appropriate, but in many sections, there's no real information and barely even enough to lead you to the help file.
Everything else in between is discussed generally well, and should be both relevant to the exam and informative for learning the technology on the whole. It gives a solid level of detail while reading like its trying to teach you something rather than the one M$ book I've used that seems to solely want to give you enough to pass the exam. Many earlier chapters could use more of the guided practice, but are otherwise fairly instructional.
This book does a much better job of deciding when to direct you to other resources, especially Books Online, than the one M$ Press book I've made the mistake of using.
The only really serious issue I had with the book dealt with some of the questions at the end of chapters. Review questions-those designed to make you think through the general concepts, e.g., "Describe the difference between x and y"-are sometimes a bit sparse or focus on a very specific, minute point.
The worst of it seems to be in a few of the "Exam Questions", which attempt to simulate what you might see on the test. In some cases the right answer was never covered in the text or worded too vaguely to really choose one answer. At least one presented two correct answers but only one indicated as right. 80-90% of the questions are just fine. But the occasional bad ones can cause you to spend an unfortunate amount of time researching your "errors" only to find out they weren't your errors.
Rating:
Summary: Could be Better
Review: This book has a lot of good content. I felt the explanations of the different subject areas were well-written, thorough, and very helpful. Succeeding on the exam is a matter of being able to think through the problems presented to you - not just memorizing isolated facts. This book can help you gain the kind of understanding you need to take the exam. I feel the book is weak in terms of focus on the exam itself and the sample tests, etc. Many of the exam questions were very poorly worded. They don't give you enough information to make a really good decision. In some cases they were just plain wrong. (Fortunatly, I didn't find that to be the case with the real exam.) One really dissapointing thing is the way the big practice test at the end nearly repeats a lot of the individual chapter test questions. So, the information in the book is good but somebody who really knows testing methods needs to rework it. Also, I think the book emphasizes areas (e.g. replication, full-text search) that aren't stressed very much on the exam. Conversely, it seemed not to cover other areas (security and performance monitoring) very adequately. This book needs to be proofread thoroughly and corrected. The CD only contains a softcopy of the book itself plus some kind of sample test. (Since the sample test in the book were so poor, I didn't waste any time installing and taking the test from the CD.) A very useful addition would be a CD containing enough data to build a reasonably large database. This could be used to give practice in creating, loading, and then running performance tests, etc. "Northwind" and "Pubs" just aren't big enough to do this.
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