Book Description
Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Unleashed, 2E offers a variety of topics for system and database administrators to help them learn new features of the product and to solve problems they face on a daily basis. It shows them how to build upon their working knowledge of the product and take their experience and knowledge to a higher level. This new edition of Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Unleashed covers the latest updates and service packs to SQL Server 2000, including full support for XML, notification services, and SQL Server CE.


From the Back Cover
Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Unleashed, 2E offers a variety of topics for system and database administrators to help them learn new features of the product and to solve problems they face on a daily basis. It shows them how to build upon their working knowledge of the product and take their experience and knowledge to a higher level. This new edition of Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Unleashed covers the latest updates and service packs to SQL Server 2000, including full support for XML, notification services, and SQL Server CE.


About the Author
Ray Rankins is currently owner and president of Gotham Consulting Services, Inc. (www.gothamconsulting.com) near Saratoga Springs, New York. Ray has been working with Sybase and Microsoft SQL Server for more than 15 years as a database administrator, database designer, project manager, application developer, consultant, courseware developer, and instructor. He has worked in a variety of industries including financial, manufacturing, health care, retail, insurance, communications, public utilities, and government. His expertise is in database performance and tuning, query analysis, advanced SQL programming and stored procedure development, and database application design and development. Ray's presentations on these topics at user group conferences have been very well received. Ray is coauthor of Sybase SQL Server 11 Unleashed, Sybase SQL Server 11 DBA Survival Guide, Second Edition, and Microsoft SQL Server 6.5 Unleashed (all editions), all published by Sams Publishing, and he has written articles for publication in database-related periodicals. As an instructor, Ray regularly teaches classes on SQL, advanced SQL programming and optimization, database design, database administration, and database performance and tuning. Ray's ability to bring his real-world experience into the classroom consistently brings very high marks from students in his classes for both his instructional skills and courseware. He can be reached at rrankins@gothamconsulting.com. Paul Bertucci is a senior director with Collaborative Consulting, LLC of Boston, Massachusetts (www.collaborative.ws). He leads the San Francisco, California database and performance engineering practices. He was formerly the founder of Database Architechs (www.dbarchitechs.com) and he has more than 20 years of experience doing database design, data architecture, data replication, performance and tuning, distributed data systems, data integration, and systems integration for numerous Fortune 500 companies including Intel, 3COM, Apple, Toshiba, Lockheed, Wells Fargo, Safeway, Texaco, Charles Schwab, Cisco Systems, Sybase, Webgain, Breg, Channell, and i2 Technologies. He has authored numerous articles, standards, and courses such as Sybase's "Performance and Tuning" course and "Physical Database Design" course. Paul is a frequent conference speaker and regularly teaches database design, performance and tuning, data modeling, OLAP, Supply Chain Management, and SQL courses. He has worked heavily with MS SQL Server, Sybase, DB2, and Oracle, and has architected several commercially available tools in the database, data modeling, performance and tuning, and data integration arena. Paul serves part-time as chief technical advisor for a data integration server software company as well as an advisory board member of a software services company in Silicon Valley. Paul received his formal education in computer science from UC Berkeley. He lives in northern California with his wife, Vilay, and five children, Donny, Juliana, Paul Jr., Marissa, and Nina. Paul can still be reached at pbertucci@dbarchitechs.com or also at pbertucci@collaborative.ws. Paul Jensen is an MCDBA, MCT, MCSE, and OCP (Oracle Certified Professional) who has been involved with database and system administration for almost 15 years. His experience has made him a popular trainer, and the past few years have seen him bouncing around North America and Europe in his role as an MCT, bringing new SQL Server converts into the fold. Paul lives in Ottawa, Canada, and can be contacted through his Web site at www.infojen.com.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
SQL Server 2000 has been out for years now. But Microsoft hasn￯﾿ﾽt stood still. We￯﾿ﾽre not just talking about three Service Packs. There are huge improvements to SQL Server￯﾿ﾽs XML and Web integration (especially SQL XML 3.0). There￯﾿ﾽs new support for ADO.NET and the entire .NET Framework. There are new Notification Services for automating information delivery to subscribers. And of course, there￯﾿ﾽs a new 64-bit version for truly gigantic databases (in late beta as we write this).

SQL Server 2000 Unleashed hasn￯﾿ﾽt stood still, either. It￯﾿ﾽs followed right behind Microsoft, adding coverage of a wide range of new features that Microsoft￯﾿ﾽs added to SQL Server 2000. In this Second Edition, the authors have also expanded quite a bit of their First Edition coverage -- notably, their chapters on Query Analyzer and SQL Profiler.

Weighing in at more than 1,500 pages, this book is anything but padded. It￯﾿ﾽs useful from start to finish. The most exhaustive coverage is dedicated to the core database product itself, day-to-day administration and management, to programming with Transact-SQL, and to the database engine￯﾿ﾽs newest features. On the other hand, when it comes to features like DTS, Analysis Services, and full-text search, you have to settle for￯﾿ﾽwell, really solid discussions of the fundamentals. Even here, the stuff￯﾿ﾽs darned good -- just not quite as deep.

If you￯﾿ﾽve been around the block a few times with SQL Server, this book will help you accomplish far more, far more efficiently. For example, you￯﾿ﾽll find nearly 400 pages on performance optimization -- utterly crucial in this age of constrained IT budgets. The authors walk you through SQL Server￯﾿ﾽs internals -- how it manages memory, processes, and I/O; how its tables and indexes are structured ￯﾿ﾽunder the hood.￯﾿ﾽ Once you understand that, you can really go to work on improving performance.

You￯﾿ﾽll find detailed chapters on query optimization and query analysis, followed by a practical review of performance monitoring (what to monitor and what the numbers mean). You￯﾿ﾽll understand how locking impacts performance and what you can do about it. There￯﾿ﾽs a complete ￯﾿ﾽshort course￯﾿ﾽ in high-performance database design. Last but not least, there￯﾿ﾽs a far-reaching discussion of optimizing SQL Server configuration options for performance -- everything from affinity masks to user options.

There￯﾿ﾽs exhaustive coverage of T-SQL, including its newest datatypes, user-defined functions, and indexed views. You￯﾿ﾽll start with simple INSERTs, UPDATEs, and DELETEs; move through cursors, views, stored procedures, and triggers, and finally master transactions and distributed transaction processing.

But we￯﾿ﾽll save our greatest hosannas for the authors￯﾿ﾽ practical coverage of SQL administration. If you￯﾿ﾽre a DBA, this book is truly the single source resource it aims to be. From installation and upgrades to client configuration and database creation, you￯﾿ﾽll find it here. You￯﾿ﾽll learn all you need to manage tables and indexes, enforce data integrity, backup and restore databases, manage users -- and of course, improve SQL Server￯﾿ﾽs traditionally less-than-stellar out-of-the-box security.

The whole book￯﾿ﾽs on CD-ROM (so you won￯﾿ﾽt have to lift it!) The disc also contains goodies ranging from T-SQL code and data replication scripts to XML examples and sample stored procedures (plus loads of trialware). This book￯﾿ﾽs a big winner -- in more ways than one. Bill Camarda

Bill Camarda is a consultant, writer, and web/multimedia content developer. His 15 books include Special Edition Using Word 2000 and Upgrading & Fixing Networks for Dummies, Second Edition.

FROM THE PUBLISHER