Rating: 
Summary: Great coverage, an essential reference
Review: If you are a DBA or developer, working daily with databases that support SQL, you need this book. It covers in better detail than any other book I've seen, all the behind the scenes aspects of SQL. What happens when you join, union or correlate queries? How do you know you're hitting your indexes? What new indexes do you need? Unlike most IT reference books, this one should be read cover to cover but it holds up well as a quick reference on a topic as well. Together with O'Reilly's SQL pocket guide by Jonathan Gennick, you have a formidable tool for creating and refining good SQL statements.
Rating:
Summary: Critically necessary work
Review: Most all database driven applications are going to use an SQL RDBMS. Whether you wrap them in an O/R mapping layer or write the SQL directly you are going to get to SQL at some time. And often you will find that you need to be able to tune and optimize some of the critical queries for the best performance. But how do you get there?SQL Tuning covers reading the execution plans, tweaking the queries and diagramming the plans so that you can understand what the server is doing and how to optimize it. This is a unique book for O'Reilly which is a publisher most at home with works that are mainly code or API references. This book instead teaches a methodology and does it well. No quick fixes or cookbook style approaches are presented. This book teaches action through a deep understanding of the topic at hand, and if you use SQL on systems that require high performance then this is an understanding relevant to you. Here are the key chapters: Chapter two presents the internal of the database in a solid introductory manner. Chapter three teaches you how to read execution plans. Chapter four teaches you how to control those plans on Oracle, DB2 and SQL Server. Chapter five teaches you a way to diagram the plans to understand the in more detail. Chapter six shows you how to analyse those plans then then turn that into a new execution optimized execution plan. As you can see, no quick fixes here. This is a book about a methodology and how to apply it. Bravo O'Reilly and Dan Tow for this important and unique work.
Rating: 
Summary: Not very useful for Microsoft SQL Server 2000 tuning
Review: This book doesn't offer a practical approach to tuning Microsoft SQL Server 2000. If you want a generalist book with minimalistic theoretical ideas, this may be the one for you. If you need to become an expert at practical tuning of Microsoft SQL Server 2000, take a look at "SQL Server Query Performance Tuning: Distilled" instead. SQL Server 2000 has powerful Profiler and Query Analyzer tools which can be used to effectively diagnose performance bottlenecks and get SQL Server 2000 working at the high performance levels it can achieve. Those tools are basically ignored in this book. Oracle, DB2 and MS SQL Server each have specialized tools and unique performance characteristics that must be understood to get each of them performing at peak potential. In one example the author states that simple loop joins are preferable to hash joins and he even gives instructions on using join hints. This approach will get you in a world of performance trouble in the vast majority of instances. The cases were SQL Server can run out of hash join memory are virtually NIL. The facts are that it is better to understand how the cost based optimizer works and be able to tell when it has gone in the wrong direction (not real common) and coax it (not force it) into a better query plan. Learn how to use Query Analyzer to understand what the optimizer is up to. Chris - tuneSQLServer.com
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