<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Way too many errors...
Review: Agree with previous reviewer: lots of questions for low price. However, some questions used terms (like deadly embrace) for which I can find no reference in any other material (including BOL). After scoring my answers, I reviewed their expla- nation of why the answers are right/wrong. I frequently verified these answers using BOL and discovered that about 3 to 5 answers for each exam disagreed with BOL. Having looked at some of the braindump websites, I would expect this of those sources, but not from this kind of published book. Next I will use Transcender. If I have time before my DBA and D&I exams, I will go back and verify **all** answers.
Rating: 
Summary: Riddled with errors
Review: Definitely the worst I've seen in the Exam Cram series. It looks like it was rushed to meet a dateline and I cannot believe that there was any technical review. Don't take my word for it just go through 10-20 questions of any of the exams at your local bookstore and you probably agree with my assessment. Ironically though that process might help you learn. Personally I would NOT recommend this book as I don't want to encourage such sloppiness.
Rating:
Summary: Authors: PROOFREAD if you don't want to look like an idiot
Review: I have never asked for my $ back for a book, but I am on this one. I took Practice Test 1: Almost 1 in 4 (13 out of 55) questions either have typos that would make the "correct" answer syntactically invalid, outright wrong "correct" answers, or very questionable "correct" answers. Q3. Typo: "VALUE" instead of "VALUES" Q7. Question is "What is relationship between Actors or Directors and Title." Answer incorrectly says "Many to Many". This would be true if question was "What is relationship between Actors and Directors." (One Actor can be directed by many Directors and one Director can direct many Actors). The title table is the resolution table for the many-to-many relationship between Actors and Directors. But per the question, one Actor can act in many titles; one Director can Direct many Titles. Q11. What is meant by the words "main" or "independent" entities? Where do these words come from? PaintScheme and OptionalEquipment should indeed be entities, but main? or independent? Also, recommends Customer table be keyed on Social Security numbers. These are not really unique (as they are supposed to be). Most pros would say this is a bad idea for a primary key. Q14. Since when is "Many to One" not a valid relationship cardinality? By convention, most people look at relationships like this as One to Many. It depends on which entity is your point of reference. Many to One is simply the inverse of One to Many; both are equally real and valid. Q16: Question refers to data type "text" generically in the question, but in the DDL mixes type text with type varchar. Q17: Question about relationship optionality. "Self-Recursive" is a word? Isn't that a tautology? What does recursive have to do with optionality? Q20: ">" sign is wrong for all answers according to the wording of the question. Should be "<" or "<=". Q22: Typo: "ANDprice" instead of "AND price" Q26: Adding memory to remote clients is not a hardware solution for poor performance? In a client/server environment? What about large, locally cached cursors? Q27. Question presupposes that we know and remember the exact schema of the (I assume) pubs database. Option "b" won't work because of ambiquous column names. This is true only because the particular data model chosen for pubs. It has nothing to do with SQL Server. This data model view is not given to us in the question. Also, the query has no join or where clause so we get nonsensical results (every author's name with every city/state we have & vice-versa). Q32. We are asked to insert 001001001 into an INT column. This is a bogus thing to do, but it works anyway. the value 1001001 is inserted (see Q34). Q34. This question is *exactly* the same as Q32, however this time, we are told the answer is "String or binary data would be truncated..." (see Q32). Which is right? Q40. Two of the answers given are 32,734 (this is the "correct" answer), and 32,768. According to SQL Server Books Online, neither is correct. BOL says: "A maximum of 32,767 databases can be created on a server." Q43. Asks a question about the 401K_Amt column of the Benefits table. All answers incorrectly transpose this to read 401K_Amt.Benefits instead of Benefits.401K_Amt. Q44. Maximum number of files used by a single database. I could not find answer anywhere, BOL, etc. Maybe this book is right. Correct answer given is 32,768. One option was 32,767, which, would agree with BOL's max number of DATABASES (Also incorrectly given in this book). What is a file? I hope they mean physical file, as in mydb.mdf. Q49. Each answer has a DDL statement that will not execute because it refers to a column that does not exist: prod_type(prod)
Rating:
Summary: Authors: PROOFREAD if you don't want to look like an idiot
Review: I have never asked for my $ back for a book, but I am on this one. I took Practice Test 1: Almost 1 in 4 (13 out of 55) questions either have typos that would make the "correct" answer syntactically invalid, outright wrong "correct" answers, or very questionable "correct" answers. Q3. Typo: "VALUE" instead of "VALUES" Q7. Question is "What is relationship between Actors or Directors and Title." Answer incorrectly says "Many to Many". This would be true if question was "What is relationship between Actors and Directors." (One Actor can be directed by many Directors and one Director can direct many Actors). The title table is the resolution table for the many-to-many relationship between Actors and Directors. But per the question, one Actor can act in many titles; one Director can Direct many Titles. Q11. What is meant by the words "main" or "independent" entities? Where do these words come from? PaintScheme and OptionalEquipment should indeed be entities, but main? or independent? Also, recommends Customer table be keyed on Social Security numbers. These are not really unique (as they are supposed to be). Most pros would say this is a bad idea for a primary key. Q14. Since when is "Many to One" not a valid relationship cardinality? By convention, most people look at relationships like this as One to Many. It depends on which entity is your point of reference. Many to One is simply the inverse of One to Many; both are equally real and valid. Q16: Question refers to data type "text" generically in the question, but in the DDL mixes type text with type varchar. Q17: Question about relationship optionality. "Self-Recursive" is a word? Isn't that a tautology? What does recursive have to do with optionality? Q20: ">" sign is wrong for all answers according to the wording of the question. Should be "<" or "<=". Q22: Typo: "ANDprice" instead of "AND price" Q26: Adding memory to remote clients is not a hardware solution for poor performance? In a client/server environment? What about large, locally cached cursors? Q27. Question presupposes that we know and remember the exact schema of the (I assume) pubs database. Option "b" won't work because of ambiquous column names. This is true only because the particular data model chosen for pubs. It has nothing to do with SQL Server. This data model view is not given to us in the question. Also, the query has no join or where clause so we get nonsensical results (every author's name with every city/state we have & vice-versa). Q32. We are asked to insert 001001001 into an INT column. This is a bogus thing to do, but it works anyway. the value 1001001 is inserted (see Q34). Q34. This question is *exactly* the same as Q32, however this time, we are told the answer is "String or binary data would be truncated..." (see Q32). Which is right? Q40. Two of the answers given are 32,734 (this is the "correct" answer), and 32,768. According to SQL Server Books Online, neither is correct. BOL says: "A maximum of 32,767 databases can be created on a server." Q43. Asks a question about the 401K_Amt column of the Benefits table. All answers incorrectly transpose this to read 401K_Amt.Benefits instead of Benefits.401K_Amt. Q44. Maximum number of files used by a single database. I could not find answer anywhere, BOL, etc. Maybe this book is right. Correct answer given is 32,768. One option was 32,767, which, would agree with BOL's max number of DATABASES (Also incorrectly given in this book). What is a file? I hope they mean physical file, as in mydb.mdf. Q49. Each answer has a DDL statement that will not execute because it refers to a column that does not exist: prod_type(prod)
Rating:
Summary: Way too many errors...
Review: I just recently passed the 70-029 test on my first attempt with this book as one of my resources for practice. The questions are thought provoking and difficult, but with many errors in the questions and answers I would hesitate to recommend it. I spent too much valuable study time trying to figure out whether their questions were wrong or not. The publishers need to add erata to their site to help with this issue. That aside, this book did help me to identify some areas where I needed more study.
Rating: 
Summary: Not THAT bad...
Review: I would not purchase this book then expect to automatically pass the exam(s), but you will not find 300 exam-style review questions spanning 2 exams for this price anywhere. I wrote and passed exam 70-029 which was my last for the MCSD designation. If the core exams for the MCSD are considered difficult, then 70-029 is near impossible. No one single studying source will get you through it. There are some errors in this book, and believe me, you will never get a question on the real exam testing your knowledge of the SQL syntax for simply creating a table. But those are minor complaints paired against the value this book brings in its explanations for each question, and the sheer number of questions contained within.I must give this book a high rating simply by virtue of the fact that I used it as one of my studying resources for the 70-029, and I passed.
Rating:
Summary: A good resource for practice tests
Review: This book is a good resource for practice tests and the only one thing I used for practice in order to prepare to take the exam 70-029 . The tests are very tough and the answers are very interesting. Thanks to it I'm now the second MCDBA in Dominican Republic. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Pure ...!
Review: This was my first book in the Exam Cram series, and I'm truly stunned over the absolute rubbish this book contains. Luckily someone else has reviewed and posted most of the stuff that is highly questionable in this title, so I can soon throw it away and get on with my life... It's packed with syntactical errors, wrong answers, typos, ambigous and subjective scenarios that doesn't rely on facts and blatant statements that are just not true... 'There is no such thing as a unique clustered index'..??? I almost fell out of my chair reading that explanation in one of the answers... The authors also apparently have no knowledge of SQL Server's security model, as they fail to recognize that one of their 'correct' answers regarding the usage of a view, would not work because of a broken ownership chain.. and on and on and on... I can't reccomend this title to *anyone* - it's so bad that if I could I'd be tempted to sue for mental damage...
<< 1 >>
|
