sql

This book makes a good administrative tool, particularly for people for whom SQL admin is one of many responsibilities and who therefore can't spend the time for in-depth training. One main flaw in this book is that it pretty much ignores the design aspect of setting up a new database and/or server. For example, the book lacks any information on best practices for the physical layout (files, drives, RAID, etc) or security. It assumes someone (a consultant?) knew what they were doing and set up the server and databases. Personally, I see this as part of the administrator's role. Another major shortfall of this book is that it excludes clustering completely, and as databases are more and more critical to companies, clustering is gaining in popularity.

This book is designed as a reference book and it does a decent job as that. The layout, contents, and index make finding what you need very easy. If, however, you want a book to read cover-to-cover in order to learn SQL administration, this is not it.

This book does not cover any advanced topics. For example, it will not teach you how to program DTS or how to spot performance problems due to bad indexing. It does, however, provide a very rock solid instruction on how to perform 95% of SQL administrative tasks. Cynically speaking, this book will teach you how to become a very successful button pushing SQL monkey. If you want to become something better, than I strongly suggest you buy and master "SQL 2000 Unleashed" and "Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Performance Optimization and Tuning".

Overall this is a concise good overview of a complex product. It covers all the basics and in general the author did a good job of writing in plain language. Instead of typical Microsoft mumbo jumbo. I do find fault with the chapter on Security. The author refers to the built in "Guest" user account as a login. Which confuses the issue. I think he was confused about MSSQL's security schema as I am. (The security schema can be thought of in 3 layers: logins, users/serverroles/dbroles, and the actual object& statement permissions.) One last note, last time I checked Microsoft's Technet has a free online copy of this book. The book is still worth the full price I paid for it.