Preface

The most wonderful thing about writing a book and having it published is getting feedback from you, the readers. Of course, it's also the worst thing. I wanted the previous edition, Inside SQL Server 7.0, to satisfy everybody, as impossible as that might sound. When I got e-mail from readers thanking me for the book, I would feel that all the time I put into it was well spent. When I got e-mail telling me that the book was not satisfactory, I would worry and fret and try to figure out how to make it better the next time. In fact, most of the negative comments were from people who complained about what wasn't included in the book, as if they were seeing the cup half empty instead of half full. As I said in my preface to the last edition, this book doesn't cover the entire product. The focus, as the name Inside implies, is on the core engine, in particular the query processor and the storage engine. The book doesn't talk about client programming interfaces, heterogeneous queries, or replication. In addition, some internal operations aren't discussed, such as security. However, unlike in the previous edition, I do include a discussion of the backup and restore operations. But I had to draw the line somewhere so the book wouldn't be twice as long and so I wouldn't still be writing it and avoiding calls from my editors asking when the next chapter would arrive.

For Inside SQL Server 7.0, I basically followed Ron Soukup's original outline. I made changes as required for the new version of the product, some of them quite substantial, but the organization was basically as it had been in the very first edition. In Inside SQL Server 2000, I've consolidated most of the information about indexes into a separate chapter. The previous editions discussed transactions, stored procedures, and triggers all in one chapter; with the addition of user-defined functions and new trigger capabilities in SQL Server 2000, I've split the discussion into two chapters. In the previous editions, query processing and tuning were combined into one huge chapter. I separated these topics into two chapters, one dealing with the internals of query processing and how the SQL Server optimizer works and another chapter that provides suggestions for using what you've learned to write better performing queries. Finally, I combined two chapters dealing with Transact-SQL programming into one. When Ron's first edition came out in 1997, there were no good books on the market about complex programming using the Microsoft dialect of the SQL language. That is no longer true, and suggested reading list at the end of this book mentions three excellent books about writing very advanced queries using Transact-SQL. I am grateful to the authors of those books for allowing me to minimize my discussion of programming and to concentrate more on the workings of the SQL Server engine.

I hope you find value here even if I haven't covered every single SQL Server topic that you're interested in. You can let me know what you'd like to learn more about, and I can perhaps refer you to other books or whitepapers. Or maybe I'll write an article for TechNet or SQL Server Magazine. You can contact me via my Web site at www.InsideSQLServer.com.

As with the previous edition, this edition is not a new features guide or an upgrade book. However, I felt it necessary to compare areas of behavior where drastic changes occurred, in order to minimize confusion for people who have used the product for years. New users can simply ignore any references to what SQL Server used to do and appreciate the product for what it is today.

To help you appreciate SQL Server 2000 even more, the companion CD includes a complete reference to the Transact-SQL language, including all the system stored procedures. Although this reference is a Microsoft Word document, it is actually intended for use on line; many of the elements of a syntactic construct contain links to the further description of that element. When using the document on line, you can simply click on the colored element and you'll be repositioned at the document with more details about that element. I am grateful to Frank Pellow for sharing this document. He has included his e-mail address in the document and invites comments and suggestions from readers.

Now comes the part I've looked forward to the most—thanking all the wonderful people whose enthusiasm and generosity have made writing this book not only possible but even a pleasure.

First on my list is you, the readers. Thank you, thank you, thank you for reading what I have written. Thank you to those who have taken the time to write to me about what you thought of the book and what else you want to learn about. I wish I could answer every question in detail. I appreciate all your input, even when I'm unable to send you a complete reply.

Thanks to Ron Soukup for writing the first edition and for giving me his "seal of approval" for taking on the subsequent editions. Thanks to my former editor at SQL Server Professional Journal, Karen Watterson, for opening so many doors for me, including passing on my name to the wonderful people at Microsoft Press.

The SQL Server development team at Microsoft has been awesome. David Campbell's assistance was invaluable, once again; in fact, I wouldn't sign the contract to write this new edition until he promised me that he'd still be available to answer my questions. In this edition, I went into more detail about the query processor and optimizer, and I am indebted to Lubor Kollar for his enthusiastic support. He actually seemed glad to see me when I stopped by his office, and he made me feel as if he valued my questions. Thank you, Lubor. Hal Berenson made valuable contributions to the sections on query processing. Most of the flowcharts in Chapter 15 are from his TechEd presentation on query processor internals. As with the previous edition, Hal was also my primary resource for the update of the history section in Chapter 1. Thank you, Hal. Greg Smith, Gert Drapers, Euan Garden, Sameet Agarwal, Paul Randal, Eric Christensen, Cesar Galindo-Legaria, Wei Xiao, Michael Kung, and Giorgia Paolini opened their doors to me and responded to my (sometimes seemingly endless) e-mails. Goetz Graefe, Alan Brewer, Michael Zwilling, Darren Gehring, and Dan Meacham also offered valuable technical insights and information. I owe very special thanks to Fadi Fakhouri for the time he spent helping me understand the intricacies of SQL Server's full-text processing capabilities. Other members of the development team, including Damien Lindauer, Ganapathy Krishnamoorthy, Siva Raghupathy, Srikumar Rangarajan, Balaji Rathakrishnan, Sam Smith, Peter Carlin, Beysim Sezgin, Steve Lindell, Alazel Acheson, Susan Su, and Dana Burnell provided answers to my e-mails; I hope they all know how much I appreciated every piece of information I received.

I am also indebted to Steve Dybing and Bob Ward, who aren't really on the development team per se but whose patience and quick responses I appreciated more than I can say. And many thanks to Arvind Krishnan, who stepped to the plate in the bottom of the ninth and knocked the ball out of the park with all his help on the last chapter. If not for him, we might still be in extra innings. (I apologize to international readers and to the translators for the very American metaphor here.)

I owe more than just simple thanks to Richard Waymire for being a friend as well as a technical resource on the development team. Even though I don't cover most of his special areas in the book, he was unfailingly generous with his time and answers and quicker than anybody else in his response to my e-mailed questions. While writing this edition, I almost felt like a part of the development team myself. This was due not only to the generosity of the developers but also, in no small part, to Leona Lowry for finding me office space in the same building as most of the team and allowing interoffice mail to be sent to me through her. Thank you, Leona. The welcome you gave me was much appreciated.

I received tremendous support from Ryan Trout and Jeff Ressler of the SQL Server marketing team, who provided advance copies of whitepapers and sample exercises for exploring new features, as well as T-shirts and toys bearing the SQL Server logo. Ryan also arranged for the loan of a Toshiba laptop, loaded with Windows 2000 Server, so I could run my tests on a state-of-the-art machine. I am very grateful to Toshiba for their generous assistance. Thanks, Ryan, and thank you, Toshiba.

I found that other SQL Server trainers were the best help in digging into certain new behaviors and trying to figure out what was really happening. Thanks to Glenn Christiansen for posing so many puzzling questions and volunteering lots of technical insights. Writing this book wouldn't have been nearly so much fun without his help. Thanks also to Kimberly Tripp-Simonnet, Don Vilen, and Arthur Siu for many valuable suggestions on how to explain new behaviors. My editors at Microsoft Press deserve thanks also. David Clark, my acquisitions editor, got the ball rolling. Rebecca McKay, the project editor, made sure the chapters kept coming, and my terrific technical editors—Marc Young and Jean Ross—made sure those chapters turned out well. But, of course, Marc and Jean couldn't do it alone, so I'd like to thank the rest of the editorial team, including manuscript editor Ina Chang. I know you worked endless hours to help make this book a reality.

Some people might think that working as an independent trainer and writer can get lonely because I don't have coworkers to chat with every day in the office. But I've actually got something even better. As a SQL Server MVP, I work with over a dozen other SQL Server professionals to provide online support on the public newsgroups in the SQL Server forums. We share a private newsgroup with several Microsoft Support Engineers who serve as our interface with Microsoft, and through this newsgroup as well as various conferences, I have gotten to know this group personally. Boundless gratitude is due Itzik Ben-Gan for his amazing generosity, both professional and personal. In fact, his detailed scrutiny of the previous edition of the book earned him his role as a technical advisor of this edition. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, Itzik. I really couldn't have done this without you. Roy Harvey, Brian Moran, and Wayne Snyder offered much needed moral support whenever I asked for it, and more importantly, when I didn't. B. P. Margolin was extremely generous with his comments on the previous edition and also provided the stored procedures for estimating table and index sizes, which are on the companion CD. To you guys and to the rest of the MVP crew—Neil Pike, Tibor Karaszi, Ron Talmadge, Tony Rogerson, Bob Pfeiff, Fernando Guerrero, Umachandar Jayachandran, Gianluca Hotz, Steve Robertson, Trevor Dwyer, Darren Green, Russell Fields, and our Microsoft support buddies Shawn Aebi, Steve Dybing, and Paul Wehland—I'd like to say that being a part of your team has been the greatest honor and privilege of my professional life. I could not imagine working with a more dedicated, generous, and talented group of people.

Most important of all, my family continues to provide the rock-solid foundation I need to do the work that I do. My husband Dan continues to be the guiding light of life and my inspiration for doing a job well. My daughter Melissa, who has just returned from a year of world travel as a Watson Foundation post-graduate fellowship recipient, continues to be a role model for me as she expands her horizons and decides what she wants to learn about next. My three sons Brendan, Rickey, and Connor, who are growing up to be generous, loving, and compassionate young men, have also recently decided to follow in my footsteps. Brendan is becoming a writer, although unlike me he is writing fiction. I eagerly await each new chapter of the novel he has in progress. Rickey learned to program in half a day this past summer, and after less than a month is writing more complex games than I ever wrote. And Connor is writing stories and acting in plays, which is not too different from what I do when teaching classes. My boys have been a source of countless hugs and kisses and I feel truly blessed to have them in my life.

Kalen Delaney, 2000