Rating: 
Summary: Revolutionary
Review: One word somes up this book: revolutionary. It will literally revolutionize how you think about SQL Server and even DBMS's in general.Why is that? Because it approaches looking at SQL Server through the eyes of an experienced developer and DBA. Every point of any significance that the book makes it makes through code and coding examples. Want to know how SQL Server managers memory? Work through the example in the book that attaches a debugger to the server and lets you see for yourself! Want to know how the shared memory net library works? Work through the example that shows transfering data between processes using shared memory. Want to know how client apps communicate across the network with SQL Server? Work through the many examples that show how to communicate across a network over named pipes, sockets, etc. No other book on SQL Server takes the approach this one does. It is simply revolutionary.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent reference
Review: I have been a fan of the Guru books for some years now. This is the best one of the series and the best Sql book money can buy. As is typical with the whole series, this book is extremely deep. It covers the entire gamut of the Sql platform and teaches things only the experts know. I think the best thing about the book is the big section on Windows OS foundations. I have Richter's book and I have Inside Windows. This is easily more readable than either of them and provides a solid foundation for the Sql Server chapters that follow. Another great part is all the internals chapters. I especially liked the chapter on the UM Scheduler and the one on Sql's memory mgt. These are deeper than anything else I have seen on Sql's internals. You might think with such deep technical internals coverage that the book would be extremely narrow, but you would be wrong. The book also covers an astonishing range of Sql topics. Everything from server federations to replication to DTS to Notification Services and many others. I had never even heard of Notification Services before I got this book and had the example up and running about an hour after I finished the chapter. The learning curve is pretty steep with this one, so don't start here if you're a beginner. Start with the Books Online, then move up to this one after you've had some time with the platform. I think this belongs on the reading list of anyone who administers or develops for Sql. My developers each have a copy and is by far our most used Sql book these days.
Rating: 
Summary: Again, book's material is seriously behind the times
Review: Some talk of the "new" sqlxml in the gg series of books. I've seen very large laments on the gg series of books and claims of managing extremely large implementations, yet this team finds xml new. It was being used by large companies as far back as 4 years. Four year old techology is just now being proclaimed as the next new thing. That is the common thing with this series. It's behind the times of the real professionals inthe United States of America who have been using sqlxml since 2000 in a very serious way. Most developers have moved far beyond this now with web based services and sqlxml implementations that of a new breed altogether. It's what all major forces in IT today are doing. Again, it's plain from the examples and statements this series and it's followers are on a much more conservative track. If you are serious about technology, this series is just, plain and simple, way too conservative for you. The XML chapters are so light on the technology it is actually behind the material we were using 4 years ago. There are absolutely ESSENTIAL technologies within SQLXML that are not even mentioned in the latest book. No serious developer can go anywhere beyond a few table transformations with this series. That is it. SQLXML goes so far beyond that and it's apparent the writer adn readers are unaware of it at this time. As a rule all of the books in this series are seriously behind the cutting edge by at least 4 to 5 years. There is no debate about this, simply look at the topics in these books and compare it to books much older and you will find the same material, only typically in much more detail with excellent graphics and examples that use actual sales or other business type examples. Not a four or five table example with Ken's hot sauce as the complete XML chapter's examples.
There are professional SQL server guides that were put out in 2000 that cover SQLXML far and away better than the most current book in this series.
Way too conservative and outdated in all editions.
Rating:
Summary: Seemed rushed.
Review: The author mentions on his website, I believe it was, the one as others have mentioned that is not put together very well. Feedback or any searching is impossible since it doesn't work, but anyway on the book itself the author does mention procrastinating and only leaving a relatively short period. Maybe it's right in the book, but in either case it shows. The tie between the msdn/technet topics the author chose (i'm guessing that may have been the inspiration as I found a page while browsing that had several of the very topics listed but that's a guess) I just don't see the relevance that everyone else is saying really nails it down? SQL will not even be running on this platform within a year or so. Who, that would buy a book at a guru's level, not know his/her windows programming? That would be insane. I found it to be major filler. The notification services? What was good about that large chapter with a non working example? I truely believe from what is written in that chapter the vs.net help files was where the idea was born, but I suppose an author must find inspiration somewhere. What some are reasoning as a cohesive last piece that puts it all together, is really a widely scattered mixture of topics that get us no closer to using an enterprise piece or software as it was born to be used. I honestly am completely disenchanted their is NO mention of any enterprise terminology, just in the least, not to mention there should be material on it instead of notification services vb.net code that doesn't work? What is brilliant about that. If you did not know better, an average person would never know this was not a standalone piece of software after reading all 3 books with very very small exceptions.
This is not what my team uses. It was reviewed but quickly put aside for vastly superior material that is geared toward using SQL for what customers large and small want from it TODAY. Not 10 years ago, today. All companies large adn small need the same things from this enterprise software at this time and I can't find any of it in any of these books. Sorry but this is of little worth to developers working with companies that elect to use state of the art technology. I strongly feel the name of this series in tongue in cheek, it's not above any other sql book I've seen and lags behind most good professional SQL server books.
Rating:
Summary: Below average coverage on all topics, most repeats
Review: I am CEO of an international consulting firm with contracts in defense, aerospace, pharmaceuticals and many fortune 500 companies. I direct thousands of developers and hands down this series is seen as a tinkerer's series. They all feel this series in nothing more than embellishment of a life's work on figuring out different ways to do the same thing with SQL server. Time and again we talk about the ads that state how the "arrays" were a revelation to them, which in an environment such as ours is a form of entertainment. Any programmer in the company could design an array with any language, using a text string. That is a beginning programmer's classroom project, not something useful in professional development. What is the all the fuss over this series. It's all text, with absolutely no point of focus that all programmers, the best in the world, will tell you is worthless without. In other words this book talks about subjects without giving any real examples. What vague examples there are, are exact repeats, for example the first book's examples on cursors is repeated 5 years later in this book. From indexes to query optimization, from cursors to com automation, the same material, examples, and even little quips are repeated in this book.
It is mostly repeated material and it's extremely weak on those subjects and any new ones thrown in.
Any book in the series, including this one, reads like a how to program guide from a novice programmer of the 1980s. It follows a sequential iterative model with no attention given to object oriented programming save a few brief statements and glossed over material. The main comment on this book from the teams of programmers is that they cannot distinguish it from their first semester programming material, it is simply for the beginner or even those looking to use SQL as a hobby. An enterprise piece or software deserves enterprise level attention and this volume, along with all others gives none of that. There is absolutely no hint what decade this is being written in except for the mention of a few topics, comparing the 1990s and this first decade of the new century. This area of development has no idioms and patterns destined to last over time like a programming language may and we found it a waste of valuable time to our teams of developers.
We are mystified with the large number of great advertisements on this book, but in many cases it is evident the aim is for the novice or amateur, written by the same.
It's a 2 star book in any of the thousand of developer's minds, that's concensus and only that for some decent query ideas on rare occasion. Otherwise we use many other up to date books as our references to guide us through this brave new world of programming. This book has decided to stay behind in the old world of procedural, character based models for reason not understood by our outstanding team of pros.
This book is extremely weak in any area of today's IT development techiques. For the most part it is completely absent of them.
Rating:
Summary: For intermediate to advanced users only
Review: I agree wiht the review below that says that this book isn't for beginners. It certainly isn't. But for everyone else - from intermediate to experts - there is a mother load of great info and deep technical information. I know some will say the book is *too* technical, but that just means that it delivers an incredible value. You may have to read it multiple times to really get it, but at least the info is there to start with. Each section in this book could be a book unto itself. My two favorites are Query Processing and SQLXML sections. There are hundreds of pages set aside for these two very important topics. If they were all the book contained, it would still be worth many times the price.
Rating:
Summary: Beginner material, weak on stored procs and XML
Review: One of my 200 programmers said it well, this book reminded him of a beginner database course he once took in 1998. A little windows material, etc etc. All stuff educated pros know off the top. Anyone that is claiming they are seeing this for the first time is not working a professional environment is all we can tell.
Book is very weak on XML, stored procs and all aspects of development with SQL server. No examples of any worth and not tie into development of today's system. None whatsoever anywhere in this book.
Recommend avoiding if you are a professional.
Rating:
Summary: Crown jewel of the series and a must for the enterprise
Review: First, a little about me: I am the VP of development for a large communications firm. We build communciations software based on Sql Server and have customers around the world. Our largest customer is a multi-terabyte implentation with thousands of servers. We serve about 20,000 customers worldwide. Now about the books: The guru's guide series of books has everything you need to learn to use Sql Server at an enterprise level. Most books are task-oriented -- that is, they teach you how to do one thing or another. The gg books are different: they teach you how things actually work. As Mr. Campbell, the product manager for Sql Server, says in the forward, Henderson is an author is obviously not satisfied with surface explanations or shallow understanding. These books reek of deep knowledge and insight. They are all you need to use Sql Server productively in the enterprise. I will now talk about the things I liked about each book. The Guru's Guide to Transact-Sql is simply the best book on the planet for mastering Transact-Sql. Since Transact-Sql is the language by which applications communicate with Sql Server, this is essential. This book is a fresh look at a language that has been around since the early 90's. It shows all the new features as well as numerous old tricks. It shows how to get more value from the language and use it to do things that most Transact-Sql coders simply don't know about. There is one novel technique after another in this book, one solution to hard problems facing enterprise applications after another. This book should be the cornerstone to any shop developing software for Sql Server. The second book in the series is the Guru's Guide to Stored Procedures, XML, and HTML. This book does two things: it picks up where the first book leaves off and takes the discussion of getting the most out of Transact-Sql a step further. It also introduces you to SQLXML, Sql Server 2000's new XML-based feature set. There are several chapters on SQLXML alone and they even include a basic XML primer which the developers working for me absolutely loved. The book is actually even better than the first guru's guide which surprised most of my developers and architects. I would say it is our favorite development book for Sql Server thanks to topics like design patterns, testing, refactoring, coding conventions, and source code management that no other Sql Server development book talks about but that this book dedicates whole chapters to. This book is professional Sql Server development for the masses. It elevates Transact-Sql and SQLXML develoment from a haven for hackers to a professional engineering discipline, something the programming manager who works for me swears by. The Guru's Guide to Sql Server Internals and Architecture is the last book in the series. I personally believe it is the best of the series, but others on my team still favor the second book. It picks up where the first two books leave off and updates what they had to say on certain topics. For example, it updates the SQLXML coverage in the second book and covers all the new SQLXML features that have appeared in the Web releases since the second book was written. It updates the coverage of distributed partitioned views in the earlier books to reflect bug fixes in that technology. It also updates topics discussed in the previous books by going more into their architectural and design details. For example, it updates the discussion of Full Text Services from the first book by talking about how the technology is designed and why it is so. This a must read for any one working with the technology, especially large enterprises that depend on it. The other thing I like about the new book is how it covers so much of the product. Inside Sql Server 2000 covers what turns out to be a pretty narrow slice of the Sql Server. This book covers all that that book does and then some. For example, there are great chapters on Notification Services, DTS, replication, server federations, FTS, ODSOLE, and many others. Each one is packed with useful info for people creating enterprise-class software on the Sql Server platform. Each one is a must read for anyone working with the respective technology. A common feature of all the book is how pragmatic they are, how practically useful the techniques they teach and the code they provide is. There are literally hundreds of sample code files included on the CD with each of the books. I counted over 1000 on the last book alone. Much of this code can be used in production without modification. Unlike a lot of book code, this code doesn't just teach, it is also very practically useful. The best feature of all for these three book is how well written they are. Henderson mentions that he not one for longwindedness or artiface in his writing, and my team has found these books very plainspoken and very readable. What you get here is great writing from a master teacher who obviously knows Sql Server inside-out. One last thought: this series of books is a must read for enterprise-class customers because it stresses one thing over and over: you must really understand a technology inside-out and comprehensively to use it optimally. The importance of this truth only increases with the size and complexity of the technology and the implementation. If you rely on Sql Server for you enterprise as we do, you should buy a copy of each book in this series for everyone who touches Sql Server.
Rating:
Summary: Not useful in Healthcare
Review: I am director at a large healthcare institution running the worlds largest healthcare enterprise software system and I have 15 world class programmers working for me. We buy books for everything from reference to guidance for crosstraining since all of the programmers are expert in one area or more. This series of books has been one of the least used by the team as we develop world class healthcare applications on sql server, for one. We have multiple terabyte sql server implementations and the programmers here rarely touch these books stating they have a lack of any continuity or depth of subject. All of the OS related material is beginner material to them and they are all working on cutting edge development as are all our partner healthcare organizations. This book doesn't even touch on 80% of SQL server's true beauty and usefullness. To us these are obscure and simply bothersome topics that are of no use to world class programmers. Time and again they read how these books provide complete coverage on each topic when any IT professional in our environment is dealing with several books just to have reference for XML alone. Those types of statements need to be taken with a grain of salt. Any focused group of professionals are far beyond this book and doing exclusive web and .NET development in SQL as that IS the future of SQL and most other technologies, NO discussion necessary. This book is extremely weak in XML. There are absolutely NO examples of browser output beyond a few beginner examples of raw xml. That is it. The book has no real world examples anywhere in it and lacks on examples in all topics as well. Not a single graphic to demonstrate any technique of output. The vast wordiness that is often only opinion on technique that has nothing to do with the professional community. We live it each day in an evironment where we discuss the current and future evironments with thousands of the United States most able programmers, and with many in Federal Government who are now getting up to speed in wake of 9/11 with state of the art database technology. They too know the future of SQL server and programming in general is years ahead of this series of books. If there were a professional community list it would be near the bottom. Just needed to set the record straight for any working professional looking toward the real state of the technology. 10% of this book may cover XML but XML is something that could not be covered by 100% of it. The XML in this book is, again, very very weak. Anyone who has been to w3c.org to inspect the standards and what is involved will clearly see this, and any professional already knows this. I don't feel it would be fair to list the books my team use for SQL server, but it covers the aspects of all current technology used by SQL, from .NET 2003 to building datamarts and warehousing which is an absolute requirement from the smallest to the largest implementation right now. We have worked for 100 bed hospitals that are looking for OLAP solutions, it is here to stay and an integral part of SQL, not a side issue for another volume.
The group puts it like this.
The book has no real depth on any one topic regardless of what is advertised.
There is no continuity of ideas or topics and the book is therefore needlessly confusing even though the topics are beginners level.
BOL and vs.net along with technet and msdn blow this book away in their coverage of scatter-gather I/O and other other topic in this book, plus they are up to date. This book is already 2 years behind just in a factual sense, much further in respect to the zeitgeist of IT.
I felt after hearing this continually from my group, that those in all industries, not just large healthcare organizations such as ours, need to look for material that provides more depth on the topics that are needed most to serve the SQL development community. Visit any SQL site at microsoft, or oracle or any other enterprise database and you will see where we are coming from and these advertisements are mere marketing and have no bearing on reality. A word to the wise: an ad maker that states "the best book ever" has obviously very very little to say about the reality of things. And the fact all other ads are voting heavily for this remark, should completely finish your analysis.
Good luck and keep searching, this is beginner material in a high end shop. I suspect in most any shop.
Rating: 
Summary: Not for beginners
Review: I run a small group of about 12 people. We sell software for the health care industry. Our Sql Server skills range from beginner to expert. This book is probably not appropriate for true beginners. I think the guy who started with us Monday was ready to quit after spending a day or two with this book. He had never seen Sql Server before and was overwhelmed by all the information in this book. If you are a true beginner, I recommend you begin with something else. The Online Books and Inside Sql Server would probably be my recommendations. For the rest of us, the book has been a godsend. It has explained things that bugged us for years about Sql Server. It has opened whole new worlds to us in terms of how the engine works under the covers. And the DTS chapter is better than a whole book I have on the subject. Many of the chapters are like that - so comprehensive that they blow away whole books dedicated to the same subject. The other thing I should mention is all the useful code the book provides. I could give lots of examples. The best is the Regular Expressions and Soundex code. Our app has to support searches using Soundex and RE. This book provides user defined functions for both. Previously we had implemented this in client-side code because Sql Server doesn't featuer an RE search operator and its Soundex function is so limited. By going to the functions in this book, we literally tripled the performance of the main search option in one of our systems. The book is loaded with useful code like this.
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