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Summary: Greate book and CD
Review: Theres so much good about this book that I don't know where to start. For one thing its absolutely loaded with code. Hundreds and hundreds of examples. Good code too. I'm using some of it as I write this. The writing is also very good. Other reviewers have commented on this and I agree. I find this guy really easy to read. The text flows really well. Great code + great text = one heck of a book.
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Summary: Covers everything
Review: There's no stone left unturned here. There's so much code here that I still haven't read through all of it. The commentary is right on - not too thick, not to light. The techniques shown are original and innovative - there's lots of stuff here I've not seen anywhere else. This book is unlike any other SQL book I've seen. It's one of my favorite programming books ever.
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Summary: The man can write!
Review: It's refreshing to find a technical book that reads so well. Too many times we get books written by a dozen different people with a dozen different writing styles. Not this one. The style of writing is superb and is consistent throughout. If you read this book cover to cover, you'll come away knowing a lot more about Transact-SQL than you started, I don't care who you are :)Sharon Ellis.
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Summary: Destined to become a classic
Review: In my job as a consultant and trainer, we buy all the SQL Server books as they come out and evaluate them for instructional use. My favorite of all of them is this book. The chapters I find most useful: SELECT - shows you how to do things with SELECT the ANSI people don't even know about. Henderson wields SELECT like a ninja wields a sword. VIEWS - great info on views, how to construct them, how to split up data using them, etc. DATA TYPES - all the little nuances of the various data types, how to handle NULLS, and the stuff you just won't find in the BOL. STORED PROCS - the in's and out's of building stored procs. Builds on the Transact-SQL you learn throghout the book. PERFORMANCE - worth the price alone - a veritable catalog of all the things you can do to turbo charge your code. OLE AUTOMATION - who knew you could create objects in T-SQL? The book shows how to create COM objects and call methods on them. It shows how to get COM properties back and how to check for errors. Not only that, but you get some really useful code. I'm using sp_generate_script on my production server right now. CURSORS - the best exposition we've found on this topic, even better than Inside SQL Server. FULL TEXT SEARCH - great examples and lucid explanations make learning to use this powerful technology a no-brainer. HIEARCHIES - best code we've seen on the subject because it gives you code you can actually use in the real world, not just stuff that works in a lab (i.e., no CROSS JOINS). UNDOCUMENTED - who doesn't like to find out about hidden features? The thing that really sets this book a part from others is how well-written it is. The commentary is tight, but exhaustive; to the point, but very thorough. I've got friends who aren't even SQL Server people who pick the book up off my desk and comment on how much they enjoy Henderson's style of writing. This would be a fine book even without all the technical info and code. The book is a masterpiece and is destined to become a classic someday. I'm looking forward to the author's next work.
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Summary: The best darn T SQL book on the planet
Review: I read all the magazines and buy all the books. This is hands down the best of them all. It taught me advanced techniques that no one else did. The explanations and the narrative are par excellence. I really love this one: "The advice I usually give people thinking about using cursors is not to." Ha Ha! The book is loaded with little gems like this. It's not just a "how-to" book, but a "why" book as well. He doesn't just tell you how to do something, he shows you, then he explains why and how it works. Great stuff. A book every T SQL developer should have.
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Summary: Loaded with code and expert help
Review: The best thing about this book is the experience that lines its pages. You can tell the author has written a T-SQL query or two. Some books have From the Trenches sections. This entire book is from the trenches. The emphasis is on practical use - Henderson doesn't talk about what you can't use, but he talks about everything you can. He leaves the beginner-level stuff to the BOL and other books, and sticks with the stuff you can't get anywhere else. That alone makes the book worth reading. Pick it up if you want to learn the secrets of the masters.
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Summary: The language of this book is CODE
Review: This book is insane. I've never seen so many great techniques crammed into one book. Henderson teaches by example; he speaks the language of CODE - you learn the truth of what he says by studying his code. And study is what you'll have to do, some of this stuff is __really__ advanced. Pour over it a few times, run the code yourself and see if you don't learn something. The explanations and expositions are second to none - you will learn something, no matter what your level of skill. This book opened by eyes to ways of programming T-SQL that I'd never have thought of on my own and that I've not seen elsewhere. Well worth every penny.
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Summary: A wonderful book
Review: What I like the most about this book is the indepth explanations. No one explains complex technical topics better than Ken Henderson. No one. The attention to detail and the exhausting subject material coverage are everywhere in every book I've read of his. This one carries on that tradition. In fact, Ken really out does himself in this one - it's his best work yet. You might think with 600 code samples that this book would just be a code library, but you'd be wrong. The book is loaded with good code, to be sure, but it's also laden with great explanations and thorough topic exploration. I absolutely love the book and wish more were like it.
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Summary: The one book I recommend
Review: I buy just about every book published on SQL Server. This is by far the best of them all. The clarity of the text, the goodies in the code (600 samples!), and the overall quality make this a must have for any serious SQL Server DBA, programmer, or architect.
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Summary: You'll be studying this one for years...
Review: You'll be studying this one for years. This is the deepest computer book I think I've ever read. If you really want to get every last morsel out of it, you'll have to read through it at least ten times. There are techniques here that will take people years to really understand the significance of. There are advancements here in Transact-SQL that I've not seen anywhere else. The book is a goldmine of great code. My top 10: 1. Performance tuning chapter 2. Statistics 3. Sets 4. Hierarchies 5. Select 6. Undocumented Transact-SQL 7. Cursors 8. Stored Procedures and Triggers 9. Views 10. Concurrency Truly a masterful work - the best SQL book available for any platform. Dr. T
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