Advanced Transact-SQL for SQL Server 2000: Amazon.co.uk: Itzik Ben-Gan, Tom Moreau: 9781893115828: Books

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In Advanced Transact-SQL for SQL Server 2000, authors Itzik Ben-Gan and Thomas Moreau explore the powerful capabilities of Transact-SQL (T-SQL). Ben-Gan and Moreau offer solutions to common problems encountered using all versions of SQL Server, with a focus on the latest version, SQL Server 2000.

Expert tips and real code examples teach advanced database programmers to write more efficient and better-performing code that takes full advantage of T-SQL. The authors offer practical solutions to the everyday problems programmers face and include in-depth information on advanced T-SQL topics such as joins, subqueries, stored procedures, triggers, user-defined functions (UDFs), indexed views, cascading actions, federated views, hierarchical structures, cursors, and more.

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Customer Reviews

7 Reviews

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4.4 out of 5 stars (7 customer reviews)

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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Doesn't match up to its title, 9 July 2002

By

Chris A (London, England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Advanced Transact-SQL for SQL Server 2000 (Paperback)

I was deeply disappointed with the book. Personally I think a better title would have been "Elementary T-SQL for those who can't be bothered to read the documentation". It has a huge amount of padding, definitions of a lot of things that can be found in Books Online, many references to previous versions of SQL Server, even as far back as 4.2, many snippets of attempted humour and pretend 'business cases' which I found intensely irritating, and nowhere near enough on industrial-strength stuff such as query design and performance. There is some good material for the more experienced reader (I'd say 20% of the total), but you have to search for it, and it doesn't go into enough depth when you do find it.

If it were targeted at those with a lower level of experience and knowledge, however, I would have a very different view - for those who are a little way past "select * from table" and wanting to do stuff a bit more complicated, I'd say it was quite appropriate. There is a lot of information in its 800 pages, and it's arranged well. My issue is really that it doesn't "do what it says on the tin" enough for me.

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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A very useful piece of work and set to become a classic, 9 Sep 2001

By

anthonysmall@cwcom.net (London) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Advanced Transact-SQL for SQL Server 2000 (Paperback)

I discovered this book when I was in the middle of writing a Sales Order Processing application using Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 and Microsoft Visual Basic 6. I scanned through the wealth of material in this book and I was able to adapt many of the techniques to the Sales Order application. The book applies to SQL Server 7.0 and SQL Server 2000. It is aimed primarily at developers as opposed to those performing solely administrative tasks.

It contains 20 chapters in just over 800 pages dealing with programming issues like Referential Integrity with Cascading Actions, Views, Stored Procedures, Triggers, Partitioning data using Views, Cursors etc. This book is not a rehash of the SQL Server Books OnLine. There are also 7 appendices in the book. One deals with Analyzing Query Performance, another with 'Dynamically Creating Triggers for Cascade Actions' and a 'References' appendix that is littered with good places to obtain more information about SQL Server.

There are a number of extra useful facilities. For example many chapters have a 'From the Trenches' section that provide snippets of information about situations taken from real-world projects. There are also a number of 'Best Practices' sections where the authors make usage statements based on their knowledge of SQL Server. I benefited specifically from the 'Tips and Tricks' chapter made up of submissions by people solving specific real-world problems. I certainly didn't know that it was possible to use a Case statement as part of a Join in the way it is used in one of the examples.

The book also contains a number of puzzles at the end of each chapter. I was deeply involved with the Sales Order Processing Application project and felt I was 'too busy' to study them. But that was a mistake for me. I took some time off work and during that time found that the puzzle solutions offered me the opportunity to apply T-SQL to my application as opposed to just learning/reading the mechanics of T-SQL.

If you want to broaden your horizons read and attempt the solutions to these puzzles. The actual solutions to the puzzles are provided in a separate chapter.

Some of these puzzles require mental gymnastics but then that is why the book has the word 'Advanced' in its title!

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent well Recommend, 28 Mar 2007

By

Gelder (Burnley, Lancashire) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: Advanced Transact-SQL for SQL Server 2000 (Paperback)

Excellent book and wrote in the way that all t-sql book should be, I hold a MCP in the devlopment of SQL Server 2000 and there is some excellent little tips in this book and I really deny anyone that says this book has not helped or tuned part of the working practice. This is not a book for the beginner but would not be overly useful for the extremly advanced user but for everyone else there is a major guarantee that it will teach you either a new aspect, method or trick for solving some SQL problem.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars For intermediate users
I bought this book on recommendation from an online SQL Server forum, in the hope that it would teach me how to make sense of huge T-SQL statements. Read more

Published on 17 Aug 2006 by Rouchie