Rating: 
Summary: 70-229 Preparation
Review: If you're anything like me, you may be considering this book as a study guide for 70-229. I recently took this exam and passed with a 909. The author had a hand in writing this exam and it shows. This book is without doubt the best text you can buy to prepare for the exam. Sure it doesn't cover everything in the exam, but it comes damn close. Buy this book, read it religiously and if you can afford it buy the Transcender materials too. You will pass.On the other hand, some of the negative comments you may read here are pretty spot on. The chapters on replication and DTS are weak-in some places really weak. And yes, it is absolutely loaded with unnecessary screen shots. If you are an SQL server guru you don't need this book. If however you are new to SQL server, I would've thought it would be a pretty handy one to have on the shelf. Oh, and in my opinion the author writes pretty well. It's a lot easier to read than most of the books in my collection anyway.
Rating: 
Summary: Outstanding
Review: I worked my way through a number of SQL books while studying for my MCDBA and this is, without a doubt, the best SQL book I've owned. The coverage is extensive and very thorough and the examples are very clear. I have it on my reference shelf at work and it's one I keep referring to whenever I need a quick explanation or want to get pointed in the right direction.
Rating:
Summary: Lots O good info.
Review: Rob Viera is certainly a good writer and tech person. There is a whole lot of information about developing SQL Server 2000 apps. Some of the chapters are getting old though using Visual Basic 6 code. I found there is a lot not covered in this book that is in the 70-229 Microsoft certification exam.
Rating:
Summary: Best SQL 2000 Book available.
Review: I have purchased and reviewed many SQL Server 2000 books and hands down this is the best MS SQL Server book you can purchase. It is not for the faint of heart it is long and detailed but it is presented in such away understanding is easy. I used this book as the foundation of my study for MS SQL Test 70-229 and believe me no other book can touch it for exam preparation. Even though its not an approve study guide it prepares you for real world SQL programming and will get you through the test. Great work WROX and I will buy you SQL books anytime.
Rating:
Summary: Essential reading...every page.
Review: If SQL Server 2000 were as good as this book there would be no competition from other RDBMS. There are a number of other reviews which lay out the thoroughness of this book. It is thorough. It is also well written and extremely smart. The book deserves five stars and for doing extremely well that which it sets out to do. It sets out to be a guide through the basics to the intermediate aspects of SQL Server 2000. If you are an expert DBA/SQL Programmer you will find this book remedial. However, if you are good in certain aspects but not as grounded in others this book will fill in any gaps and cement your previous knowledge. Enjoy this book. It will make you want to read each section not just use it as a lookup reference. It is worth the full read.
Rating: 
Summary: Not a good reference book
Review: For such a thick, heavy book, this one just doesn't seem to have much worthwhile content in it... lotta screen shots though. I basically bought this hoping to use it as a reference. This book is not a reference book at all. "o man, I forgot what order to put the arguements of the DATEADD function in... where do I look?" To make things easy to find, it's mentioned in the table of contents as one of the first topics in the Views section. His book on SQL 7 was better than this one. Looking at the picture on the cover gives me a headache too.
Rating:
Summary: Good Book
Review: I found this book to be very helpful. The author has given a lot of descriptive explanantions for the code in the book and the book is concise and to the point. Is much better than the other SQL Server Programming books out there.
Rating:
Summary: The book is good but it has few very bad conceptual errors
Review: I think that Author is a perfect teacher: reading the book you get complex ideas very easily.
But I found that sometimes Author doesn't understand some principle concepts! Example - 1st normal form. In his example he shows that "repeating groups of data" are _rows_, containing repeating groups of data! And truth is that 1NF is about repeating groups of _columns_, like ItemNo1, ItemName1, ItemNo2, ItemName2, etc.
A chapter on DTS also has a bad error: author believes that File Transfer Protocol Task can both download and _upload_ data, which is not true.
Anyway, I'm learning a lot from this book so I can recommend it to you but don't believe everything written in it.
Rating:
Summary: One of the worst books on SQL Server in print
Review: I have a hard time believing any objective reader with much knowledge of SQL Server would rate this book highly. It is little more than a collection of screen prints. Page after page consists of one screen print after another with little or no commentary. Take, for example, the section on DTS. Every page has at least one screen print taking up the majority of the real estate -- most have two screen prints. The standard modus operandi is two screen prints with a sentence or two between them per page. This makes for long books, but not for ones that are very interesting, useful, or enlightening. Anyone could print off the screens from the DTS wizard. An author would have something to say about the DTS technology, how it works, and how to optimize it. Not this one, though - he is focused on quantity, not quality. The rest of the book follows this same pattern. I suspect that if you removed the blatant attempts at fattening the book and filling space, you'd have about a third of the book left. And that remnant would not be much worth reading because it does not actually explain anything. It is mostly about reading screens to you and pontificating on the obvious. I don't like writing bad book reviews, but this book exemplifies all that is wrong with computer books. It is shallow, insipid, and adds nothing new to the discussion of the technology it covers. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by this - Wrox is kind of known for this sort of stuff and Vieira is a first-time author (this is just a minor upgrade of the 7.0 book) -...P>Do yourself a favor and get a different book. There have to be better ones than this one on programming such a wonderful DBMS as MS SQL Server.
Rating:
Summary: Who this book is intended for
Review: Comments and reviews aren't normally my thing, because they normally are a waste of time. Why? Anybody that wants to try a product will regardless of what we reviewers all write. It's a kind of trial and error. All we reviewers do, is give our subjective comments on a product we liked or did not like. Hmmmmm, before I wrote this review I read the other 27 reviews and then had a thought or two about the book again. Each previous review is, in their own kind of way, correct. Some people need T-SQL information other people need basic Stored Procedures information. I'd probably put this book in the range Beginners to Intermediate (great book for learing) and Intermediate to Higher-Intermediate (reference). This book is not intended for the Expert out there looking for a good reference book. It has too many basics to achieve that. I loved reading the book, because you have to grin (or even laugh) every now and then. This is because the author knows what he is talking about and if you are into DBA yourself, then you will have come across the odd similarity when trying to convince some Software Engineer to not do this, that or the other. If you don't like the book, then you're sure to find some guy in your department who will profit from reading a page or two. I'm an average (Intermediate) SQL DBA myself and do not regret buying the book. In two years time I might find the book awful, but then again, who knows what he or she will be doing in two years time?
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