Inside Microsoft SQL Server 7.0

Rating:
Summary: Very serious SQL book, must have to build solid foundation
Review: This book covers the topics very well in which I do agree and I have quoted the following points from Microsoft's site:- • Evolution, architecture, and toolset: The history of SQL Server since 1989, an architectural overview, and a comprehensive tour of its tools and features • Planning and deployment: Everything you need to know about installation and deployment issues such as multiple instances, Super Sockets, and upgrades • Databases, files, tables, and data: How to create, modify, back up, and restore databases, files, and tables; and how to query and modify data • Built-in development tools: Using Query Analyzer and SQL Server Profiler to simplify system administration and optimize performance; programming with Transact-SQL; and extending functionality with batches, transactions, stored procedures, and triggers • Query-processing techniques: Multiple indexes, hash and merge joins, and data-manipulation capabilities such as parallel queries • Internal architecture: Low-level details of data and index-page structures, cursors, locking mechanisms, optimization, and plan caching

If you like to have 90% of your work done and not too worry about the last 10%, this book is for you, even the author have said it himself, his book is not perfect. Simply because it would take him 90% of the time to finish the last 10% of the work and the book will never be published. The author is humble and in my opinion, this is one of the best books I have read and it worths five stars, although it may still contain spelling and syntax errors.

If you are a serious SQL developer and have not read this book before, I would wonder about the percentage of you to be more SQL Server junkier than the two authors, who have dedicated and exposed their life to the development of SQL Server.

This book is not for the light-hearted. For those who are only interested in finding lots of examples and picked at the last 10% of the material, which was not covered by the book to do your special tasks, this book may not suit you. This book is for the true SQL Server professionals who wish to learn and build on a solid SQL foundation, can think and derive solutions for themselves, to succeed into this field.