Rating: 
Summary: 70-229 SQL 2000 Design
Review: Good book, but certainly not the best book SYBEX has produced. I used SYBEX books for all 6 exams for MCSE WinNT, and passed all 6 the first time. Now I am pursuing MCDBA SQL 2000 certification. I used SYNGRESS to study for exam 70-228 "SQL Admin" and passed, however due to the unavailablility of a SYNGRESS book for 70-229 "SQL Design" I bought this SYBEX book AND FAILED THE EXAM. The book lacks enough 'hands on' excersizes, particularly regarding using views, stored procedures, and user-defined functions. Also, as you read through the book you can 'feel' it was co-authored. Much of the book is somewhat hard to read, but the chapters on Accessing, Inserting, and Updating Data are very easy to read with many hands-on exercizes. The chapter reviews are pretty useless for actually 'reviewing' the material, as it really only lists the topics covered and provides very little summary information of what was actually covered in the chapter. SYNGRESS books provide an excellent "2 minute drill" at the end of each chapter to review the details, but this SYBEX book does not contain any such tool. The SYNGESS/Osborne book for MCDBA exam 70-229 "SQL Design" is due out in November, and I would recommend considering the SYNGRESS book before this SYBEX book.
Rating: 
Summary: Great book ..!!!
Review: Hello everybody,
I bought this book after I saw its online review. This book is excellent not only for exam purpose but also for knowledge purppose. I cleared my exam with score of 909 today and I would strongly suggest to read this book
Rating: 
Summary: Among many other certification books, this is the best
Review: I have used MOC (The first mistake), and MSPRESS (Another mistake), then QUE (I think this book needs serious revamp) only to find out all of them do not cover what you need to know for the exam, until I came across this book. It explains concepts for 70-229 very well. It has a lot of exercises that reinforce the concepts. I gave three stars because there are still many typos and review questions with wrong answers.
Rating: 
Summary: Too many errors.. Very frustrating
Review: I originally graded this a 3, but the more I read into the book, the worse it gets and the more frustrating for me it becomes. The problem isn't that it's too complicated or moves too quickly. The book travels at a nice pace and explains a lot of useful details. The probem is that there are too many errors all over the book. Before you finish the second chapter, you will have noticed over 2 dozen anomalies. Some of them are minor typos that you can easily ignore. But most of them are errors in the syntax part of the writing and inconsistencies in the concept explanations. Lots of small errors during crucial sections (such as forgetting a 'not' or saying it CAN instead of it CAN'T) throw the meaning totally off. The more errors I discovered the less faith I had in the authors and the more frustrating the experience became. Only when the same information is repeated 2-3 times and explained in depth can I feel sure about the material. But because of all the errors, when the authors only state a certain concept once, I don't feel like I can trust them. Occasionally, some of the review questions give the wrong answers too. The authors and editors (if there happened to be any at all) should feel ashamed for releasing such a poor quality book. To top it off, the code on the CD is pathetic, as mentioned by other people. C'mon guys, this is supposed to be a tech book.. Is it too much to ask to have error free writing during the SYNTAX part, correct information about the MAIN concepts and a CD that works??
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Guide with value added
Review: I recommend this over the Microsoft book, because of the content and the sample exams and the flash cards. Much effort went into THIS book.
Rating:
Summary: Not only a good certification guide but a good reference...
Review: I used this book and transcenders to pass 70-229 on my first try. The book is excellent, however, the exam questions that came with the book won't prepare you for the exam. This book is also a good reference for your daily workings with SQL Server.
Rating:
Summary: Good book with bad CD
Review: I used this book to prepare for exam that I successfully passed. My overall impression from the book is very positive. It is well-structured; all explanations are clear and concise. It is strongly focused at exam and doesn't spend your time on irrelevant topics. I think it covers not less than 90% of what you need for exam. I recommend reading it along with enquiring Books Online. However it has noticeable amount of typos. Most of them are quite obvious, but I can recall at least a couple of typos that really made me confused. The companion CD is much worse. I expected the tests from CD to be a real help, but their format made them very inconvenient to use. Moreover, some test questions seemed to be corrupted. Honestly I think the CD is nearly useless. SUMMARY: this book is not ideal; however it can be certainly used to prepare for the exam.
Rating:
Summary: Good Learning Guide
Review: If you are totally lost and do not know where to start when studying for 229, this book is a good place to start. However, there are many holes in the book that you need to be aware of. Supplement this with reading of BOL or taking the Transcenders. If you rely totally on this book, you would be in for a shock in the exam. It covers at best 80% of the material.
Rating:
Summary: A very useful book despite all the errors!
Review: Let me just get it out of the way by mentioning first that this book contains many errors - perhaps more than an average technical book. However, most are typographical and do not degrade the value of the book that much.
Having said that, the coverage of all the exam topics in this book is nothing short of superb! The explanations are detailed, clear and with numerous examples. For the purposes of the exam, I would go as far as to say that you may not need any other supplemental material (which is very rare for a study guide)!
This book covered all but 2 questions on my 70-229 exam. One of them was regarding the full syntax of OPENXML and the other was regarding Replication.
The questions at the end of the chapters are very similar to those on the test (again, rare for a study guide). If you can answer most of those questions correctly, you will do well on the real exam.
All in all, in my opinion, this is the best book out there for the 70-229 exam.
Rating:
Summary: Comprehensive coverage filled with realworld usage
Review: Not only does this book cover the topics necessary to pass 70-229, but it contains information that will help you become a solid DBA in the real world. The coverage on undocumented DBCC commands is extemely helpful in terms of helping you understand SQL Server 2000 internal architecture and, hence, optimization. This title is among my top 3 favorite Sybex books.
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