Foreword

This is the definitive companion to Microsoft SQL Server 2000. The authors have combined the perspectives of the developer and the user into a readable and comprehensive guide. Ron Soukup led the SQL Server development team for a decade, and he continues to be one of its key architects. Kalen Delaney has been working with the application designers and developers for almost that long. This is their guide to why SQL Server is the way it is, and how it should be used. The guide complements the reference material in SQL Server Books Online.

The book begins with the inside story of how the PC database giant Ashton-Tate partnered with Microsoft and a startup (Sybase) to bring SQL to the OS/2 marketplace. The book then traces the amazing history of the product and the partners. This first-hand account makes this a must-read. I cannot think of a more amazing and entertaining story in our industry.

The book then takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of SQL Server, describing the key features and pointing out some highlights. It also goes "beneath the covers" and describes how SQL Server works inside. First-time readers might find this quite detailed, but it lays the groundwork for much that follows. Subsequent chapters explain how to design for SQL Server—giving sage advice on application design, database design, physical data layout, and performance tuning. This advice is based on watching customers use (and misuse) the product over many years. SQL Server and the Microsoft Windows environment are unique in many ways. These chapters cover the standard design issues but focus primarily on the things that are unique to SQL Server. Incidental to this, Ron and Kalen show many of the pitfalls and common errors that designers and programmers make. They also convey their sense of good and bad design. Anyone planning to do an implementation using SQL Server would do well to first read this book.

The book covers virtually all the extensions that SQL Server has made to the standard SQL language. Ron and Kalen take pride in describing these features. They often explain why features were introduced, how they compare to the competition, and how they work. This book is not an SQL tutorial, but it does an excellent job of covering the intermediate and advanced features of SQL and SQL Server. The descriptions are accompanied by detailed examples that are all on the companion CD.

The book also explains how to install, administer, and tune SQL Server. These chapters contain essential information that I have never seen explained elsewhere. It is very easy to get started with SQL Server—perhaps too easy. Some customers just install it and start using it without thinking much. Ron and Kalen walk the designer through (1) capacity planning, (2) hardware acquisition, (3) Windows, network, and RAID configuration, (4) SQL installation and licensing, (5) security policies, (6) operations procedures, (7) performance measurement, and (8) performance tuning. The book provides a valuable checklist for anyone planning to setup or operate an SQL Server system.

The book devotes several chapters to understanding performance, concurrency, and recovery issues. Throughout the book, there is an emphasis on designing for client-server and Internet environments. In these environments, the server must process business-rules (stored procedures) or set-oriented requests, rather than record-at-a-time requests. The book explains both traditional TransactSQL stored procedures, as well as user-defined external procedures and OLE Automation procedures.

The book gives a clear picture of how SQL Server transactions work. It first presents tutorial material on the ACID properties, isolation levels, and locking. It then explains how SQL server does locking, logging, checkpointing and recovery. It has a full chapter on how backup/restore work and how to protect your database from failures. It also explains how SQL Server uses the Windows Cluster feature for high-availability. This presentation is exceptionally clear. Understanding these issues is key to designing high-traffic and high-availability SQL Servers.

SQL Server database replication is described in depth—especially the features that are new in SQL Server 2000. It also describes the many new features in SQL Server 2000 like table-valued functions, variants, full-text indexing, data mining, data analysis, and multi-instance support.

In summary, this is the essential companion to SQL Server. It is an invaluable reference for the administrator and the designer—I look something up in it nearly every week. It is a first-hand account of how SQL Server works, why it works that way, and how to use it. We are all glad Ron and Kalen took the time to write this invaluable book. I certainly learned a lot from it. I guess you can too.

Jim Gray

Senior Researcher

Microsoft San Francisco Research Lab



Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2000
Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2000
ISBN: 0735609985
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 179
Authors: Kalen Delaney

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