Rating: 
Summary: The T-SQL manual
Review: Garath Wells book is a unique guidance to T-SQL programming.In "easy to read terms" the book explains working with T-SQL and gives you the basic skills to write effective Stored Procedures and triggers. The book gives many, easy to understand examples that help you build your own code. I often use the book as a T-SQL-manual. Many of my existing SQL server applications has now been tuned to run mush faster with less code thanks to the skills I developed though this book. If you are new to Stored Procedures or just want to learn more - don't hesitate to buy "Code-Centric: T-SQL Programming with Stored Procedures and Triggers"
Rating:
Summary: Real code, real situations, real productivity
Review: I compared this book with several others & it stands head and shoulders above them. The extensive coding provides examples that not only explain "how-to" for those familiar with T-SQL, but also provide "Oh, you can do THAT?" types of functionality for those becoming familiar with the language. This probably shouldn't be the first book in one's SQL reference library as not all the material would be appropriate for beginners ... but if your interests/work take you onto the programming side, this is a must-have.
Rating:
Summary: Real code, real situations, real productivity
Review: I compared this book with several others & it stands head and shoulders above them. The extensive coding provides examples that not only explain "how-to" for those familiar with T-SQL, but also provide "Oh, you can do THAT?" types of functionality for those becoming familiar with the language. This probably shouldn't be the first book in one's SQL reference library as not all the material would be appropriate for beginners ... but if your interests/work take you onto the programming side, this is a must-have.
Rating:
Summary: taken me out of tight spots
Review: I love this book because it's not so much about theory (leave that in college or for newbies) it's more about how to apply code to real-world problems. something that I find hard to find. :-) like it.
Rating:
Summary: taken me out of tight spots
Review: I love this book because it's not so much about theory (leave that in college or for newbies) it's more about how to apply code to real-world problems. something that I find hard to find. :-) like it.
Rating: 
Summary: Decent, but lots of bloated code listings
Review: I was excited when I got this book, but steadily more disappointed as I began to read it. After reading the first chapter or two, I started counting the coding errors and typing mistakes. I was up to 23 when I stopped. A lot of the code in this book simply won't run. What does is too simplistic to really be useful.
Rating:
Summary: Code-centric? Error-centric is more like it!
Review: I was excited when I got this book, but steadily more disappointed as I began to read it. After reading the first chapter or two, I started counting the coding errors and typing mistakes. I was up to 23 when I stopped. A lot of the code in this book simply won't run. What does is too simplistic to really be useful.
Rating:
Summary: Yet another shelfspacer
Review: I'm not sure what the goal with this book was, but it fails to deliver on anything positive. First, the coverage of the language as a whole is really weak. Whole subjects are completely glossed over. Moreover, if you're an advanced coder, you won't find anything you don't already know in this book. it's really for begginner's only, but as I've said, the beginner type coverage is really lacking. Worse yet, many of the examples are incomplete, tediously long (useless comments abound), and impractical. If you're looking for a good T-SQL book, keep looking.
Rating: 
Summary: Production oriented
Review: No sense repeating what's been said; read the other reviews to
find out what the book covers. One of the benefits I got out of
using Garth's book is that it's organized in a manner that helps
me be more productive. When using it as a reference, info is easy
to find, and the code samples are not all trivial as in many
other books. Therefore, one can derive new solutions to issues
not covered in the book. My copy has been loaned to three others,
and is dogeared from use.
This one stays in the toolbox.
Rating: 
Summary: Borrows heavily from other books
Review: Not very impressed with this book. Almost everything in it is from somewhere else. Also, many of the techniques recommended are quite dated. Many don't even apply to SS2K. In fact, SS2K coverage is all but missing from this book. On top of this, there are numerous errors and typos. So, you have an unoriginal SQL Server book that's loaded with errors, quite dated, and lacks coverage of the most recent release of the product - not worth your money in my opinion.
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