database design

I bought this book, thinking I would get certified.

I spent 2 months reading the pages, and doing the exercises.

Then I went to take the exam... Failed 3 times before I actually threw the book away and searched for another training source. And I'm not a dufus; I've passed many certification exams in the past.

This book contains SOME quality information, but if your goal is to get certified, just read Books On Line and totally disreguard the existance of this book.

Its common knowledge that the goal of MS certification tests is to test your ability to transform working knowledge of a product into real world application, and for that reason, an effective training source should simulate that real world expierence. This book fails to do this.

Most of the Microsoft certification books are bad, and this is no exception. A lot of page space is used explaining how wonderful Microsoft products are and no space is used defining the obscure terms that are constantly bandied about. Often a common word is used to mean something totally different than what it means to the rest of the world. Other times terms are just made up and never defined. The exercises are tedious, though occasionally userful.
Buy a different book.

This is a very well written, comprehensive book that explains many of the things you need to know for the exam. The book is nicely formatted and has very good code snippets to demonstate the use of TSQL statements, stored procedures, etc. It could use more information in the areas concerning database replication, user functions and their purpose, and sql table locking hints and their use.

I usually use the Exam Cram 2 books for studying, but the one for the 70-229 is not highly rated. It is a good thing that Microsoft Press came through with this book.