Acknowledgments

As always, a work like this is not an individual effort, although my name is the only one on the cover. I could not have written it at all without information, help, and encouragement from many people.

First on my list is you, the reader. 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 of Inside SQL Server 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. Thanks to Karen Forster and all my editors at SQL Server Magazine, who support my ongoing writing habit.

As usual, the SQL Server development team at Microsoft has been awesome. Although David Campbell was not directly involved in much of my research this time, I always knew he was there in spirit, and he always had an encouraging word when I saw him. He arranged for Lubor Kollar to be my project liaison inside Microsoft. Lubor not only helped me track down the right expert for every topic I needed to research, he also arranged for the internal review of every one of the chapters in this volume, so that instead of just the one external reviewer arranged by Microsoft Press, there were always at least two internal Microsoft reviewers for every chapter. Thank you, Lubor. One expert's name kept coming up again and again when I asked Lubor who I should talk to, and that was Sunil Agarwal. Sunil seemed to know everything about almost everything, and if he didn't know some small detail, he knew who did, and could get on the phone and get the answer for me. Sunil also reviewed every single chapter, providing even more insights and suggestions. Sunil, this book is yours almost as much as it is mine; I couldn't have done it without you.

Paul Randal's contributions were enormous as well, especially in the areas dealing with the actual physical storage structures. I have fond memories of hours in his office, enjoying his whiteboard artistry as he drilled down into details of files, partitions, allocation units, and the mysterious hobts. Slava Oks, right down the hall from Paul, also opened his door and his mailbox to me during the grueling process of writing Chapter 2, SQL Server 2005 Architecture. He made the details of memory management actually understandable, and I only hope I have done half as good a job of explaining the details as he did. Any mistakes are my fault entirely, although there would be a lot more of them if not for the careful reading and further explanations provided by Eric Christensen.

Mirek Sztajno, Sameer Tejani, and Stefano Stefani met with me and responded to my (sometimes seemingly endless) e-mails. Cliff Dibble reviewed the chapter on tables and provided so much additional information about the metadata that reading his review was an education in itself. If I just cut and pasted his insightful comments and suggestions together, I would have an entire magazine article. Don Vilen helped me revise the big architecture diagram in Chapter 2 to reflect the changes in SQL Server 2005. Stephen Jiang, Michael Raheem, Conor Cunningham, Ron Dar Ziv, Eric Hanson, Srikumar Rangarajan, Ryan Stonecipher, Steve Schmidt, Peter Byrne, Jonathan Morrison, Kevin Farlee, Jun Fang, Wey Guy, Ajay Kalhan, Boris Baryshnikov, Wei Xiao, Santtu Voutilainen, and Tengiz Kharatishvili also offered valuable technical insights and information when responding to my e-mails or to questions from Sunil. I hope you all know how much I appreciated every piece of information I received.

I am also indebted to Bob Ward, Cindy Gross, Bob Dorr, Keith Elmore and Ken Henderson of the SQL Server Product Support team, not just for answering occasional questions, but for making so much information about SQL Server available through whitepapers, conference presentations, and Knowledge Base articles. I am grateful to Alan Brewer and Gail Erickson for the great job they and their User Education team did in putting together the SQL Server documentation in the Books Online.

While writing this edition, I almost felt like a part of the SQL Server 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. Thank you, Leona. The welcome you gave me was much appreciated.

I also would like to extend a very special thank you to Jim Gray, who has written the foreword for all the editions of Inside SQL Server. Jim is my idol and my hero, and also an incredibly nice guy. It still goes straight to my heart every time he says nice things about my writing, and it means the world to me that he has agreed once again to write my foreword.

My editors at Microsoft Press deserve thanks also. Ben Ryan, my acquisitions editor and friend, got the project off the ground and kept it flying, and overcame many obstacles along the way. Kristine Haugseth, the initial project editor, made sure the chapters started coming, and Denise Bankaitis, the final project editor, made sure the chapters kept coming all the way to the end. My external technical editor, Andy Kelly, made sure those chapters turned out well. But, of course, Ben, Kristine, Denise, and Andy couldn't do it all by themselves, 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. I would also like to let my agent, Claudette Moore, know how much I appreciate all that she had to put up with from me to get the contract for this book arranged.

As a relatively independent trainer and writer, 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 dozens of other SQL Server professionals to provide online support on the public newsgroups in the SQL Server forums. We share a private newsgroup with Microsoft Support Engineers and members of the development team, who serve as our interface with Microsoft, and through this newsgroup as well as various conferences, I have gotten to know many wonderful people in this group personally. I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to all of the SQL Server MVPs, but most especially Tibor Karaszi and Ron Talmage, who participate in the private newsgroup, for the brilliant exchanges and challenging ideas discussed, and for all the support and encouragement given to me. This includes, of course, our former Microsoft MVP lead Steve Dybing, and our current lead Ben Miller. I'd like to say that being a part of the SQL Server MVP team has been one of the greatest honors and privileges of my professional life.

One particular MVP is due special thanks and that is Andy Kelly, who served as my external technical editor. Andy also is a member of another group I need to thankmy colleagues and partners at Solid Quality Learning. In late 2002, five of my colleagues and I, all of whom were very experienced SQL Server professions, decided to form a company dedicated to providing the most advanced, high-quality SQL Server training and consulting in the world. Now the company has grown to over 50 SQL Server professionals, based in many countries around the world. I would especially like to thank Fernando Guerrero for the uncounted hours of work he has performed as CEO to keep the company growing and viable. I would also like to thank Itzik Ben-Gan, an MVP and partner in Solid Quality Learning, for keeping me excited about Transact-SQL and writing the two accompanying volumes on T-SQL for this Inside SQL Server 2005 series.

I am deeply indebted to my students in my SQL Server Internals classes, not only for their enthusiasm for the SQL Server product, and for what I have to teach and share with them, but for all they share with me. Much of what I have learned has been inspired by questions from my curious students. Some of my students, such as Lara Rubbelke, have become friends, and continue to provide ongoing inspiration.

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 after over 21 years of marriage. My daughter, Melissa, is a role model for me, and provided the final motivation I needed for finishing this book, as we raced to see whether I would finish it before she finished her doctoral dissertation in Linguistics at University of Edinburgh. My three sons, Brendan, Rickey, and Connor are now for the most part all grown, and are all generous, loving, and compassionate young men, still deciding what course their lives will follow for the immediate future. Brendan and Rickey are both starting university studies this fall. Brendan is intending to go into medicine, and hopes to continue his terrific fiction writing on the side. Rickey, my most computer-savvy son, has decided to follow his other passion and major in theater arts, while doing his own game programming on the side. And Connor is writing songs for the guitar, making movies, and acting in plays as he starts his high school journey. My boys have been a source of much needed affection, and they all know when what I really need is just a good laugh, and they all can find ways to amuse me. I feel truly blessed to have them in my life.

Kalen Delaney, 2006