Introduction

Overview

You don’t have to read this introduction, but you should. It will save you some browsing time because it lays out the road map for this book, and it will allow you to best determine which parts to tackle according to your needs or discipline, your experience level, and your knowledge of SQL Server 2005.

SQL Server 2005 (or just SQL Server) is Microsoft’s database management system, data analysis product, and just plain data everything product. This book’s aim is to provide as complete an independent reference as possible to the relational database components, and where permissible and warranted, we will delve into general database and computing references…to illustrate applications with or for SQL Server 2005.

We have a long road ahead, so I am going to kick off with some advice on how to get the most out of this book. First, you do not need to have any database, programming, or system administration experience to use this book, but it would help…a lot. If this were a classroom setting, I would require you to take Databases 101 or Programming 101 as a prerequisite, only because it would help you get the most out of this book, and because otherwise you would hold up the class. But I am going to make the assumption that you know about programming, object-oriented technology, database management systems, data and computer communications, IS/IT practice, and so on. And when you come across concepts that confuse or befuddle you, you should take time out and get up to speed before continuing, because that will help you avoid costly mistakes down the road. At times I will go back to basics, just so that we all have a common point of departure.

For example, you are not going to find whole chapters devoted to normalization, or object-oriented design, or programming primers. This is not a book about building database applications with SQL Server, although several chapters cover the elements of Transact-SQL, the language you use to program SQL Server. There is no material in here to teach you how to build database applications with Visual Basic, C#, or C++. Nor are you going to get any long-winded historical “data,” such as where SQL Server 2005 came from, or where it might be heading. SQL Server 2005 is too complex and vast a product to choke this book with information covered in hundreds of brilliant books devoted to these special subjects.