Rating: 
Summary: extremely clear exposition of many important topics
Review: Unlike the majority of reviewers, who have been very critical of this book, I have found the book to be very well-written and extremely informative. Several reviewers have made unfavorable comparisons with Henderson's "Guru's Guide to Transact-SQL" book. Such comparisons are really off base, since the two books focus on very different things. Henderson's book, which is indeed a valuable book, is packed with lots of code fragments, but often without a lot of elaboration as to how and why they work. In addition the coverage of many important topics (e.g. triggers, partitioned views, user-defined functions, referential integrity) is either inadaquate or non-existent. By contrast, Ben-gan and Moreau explain in great detail the syntax and semantics of many aspects of transact SQL. For example, the book goes into great detail describing the differences between the old-style and SQL/92 syntax for inner joins and outer joins. It does a wonderful job explaining cube and rollup, has lots of examples of user-defined functions and does a good job of explaining various techniques for maintaining referential integrity. In all of these cases, the explainations go far beyond the terse descriptions found in Books-0n-Line. Ben-gan and Moreau is also very concerned with broader architectural issues. For example there is a masterful 42 page exposition of partitioned views. In no other book that I'm aware of, have I found such an exhaustive treatment of what is arguably the most important performance-oriented feature of SQL Server 2000. This chapter alone is worth the entire price of the book. In summary, if you really want to learn the nuances of T-SQL for SQL Server 2000, in a leisurely and engaging manner, you won't find a better book than Ben-gan and Moreau. On the other hand if, you want a book with a lot of code you can cut and paste into your own work, then get Henderson's book. Actually, the two books complement each other nicely.
Rating: 
Summary: I found this book to be excellent and forced much thought
Review: I initially skimmed this book looking for highlights. I've referred many developers to a section or chapter in this book when they are trying to perform T-SQL gymnastics like unequal joins, locating missing data, understanding instead of triggers, etc. This isn't a book for beginners. Make sure you have a firm grasp of T-SQL and then give yourself time to read this book in chunks. Yes, I found some errors in the code samples. But, I don't blindly run code from a book. This is a book designed to teach you many finer points of T-SQL and apply them to real world problems. If the code doesn't work, apply what the authors are teaching you and rewrite it. Way too many people just dismiss it as "beneath them", "not advanced", "rehash of BOL", etc. I doubt any of them even put forth the effort required to understand what Tom and Itzik are trying to teach you. This is a book that will require you to think, but at the end of the road you will be miles ahead of your counterparts in your understanding of T-SQL. There isn't enough room for an exhaustive treatment, but the authors present T-SQL in a way that pushes you well beyond "memorize and regugitate" and certainly allows you to apply T-SQL in ways you would have thought were not possible. T-SQL is a simple language, but it is extremely complex in this simplicity. Thank you Itzik and Tom for deepening my understanding.
Rating:
Summary: A commentary on Critiques:
Review: A common theme among the negative critiques, is the use of the word "Advanced" in the book's title. Personally, i think the authors should simply have chosen a different title, and half of the negative comments would have been subdued. (Something to signify the apparent intent of the authors, such as "An anthology of T-SQL", or "A Comprehensive Introduction to T-SQL" ...) "Advanced" of course is to some extent a product of one's own thinking, and experience. Another aspect to this subject of "Advanced" has to do with the totally hackneyed, over-worked use of the term "Guru." Someone / something can in fact be "Advanced", and NOT be in the realm of "Guru." This term is COMPLETELY over-used, and over-applied. There are in fact but a very FEW "Guru's" out there in the 'Real World' (Ken Henderson being one.) A Guru is a unique, creative combination of high native intelligence, tireless enthusiasm, and indeterminate hours of true, Hands-On Experience, with the product. A Guru can be identified as someone who ALWAYS seems to know more about the topic, no matter what he/she is asked or challenged with. (As an aside....a "Guru" is NOT always a great, or even good, author ... or, communicator to humans, in general ... although this particular talent definitely is advantageous!) In short, evaluate a product, such as a computer book, on its merits, applicability to the task at hand, and value to YOU. Take with a GIANT grain of salt, any negative critique(s) before choosing .... esp. those propagated from a SINGLE source masquerading as MULTIPLE people!
Rating: 
Summary: Lots of good, more not-so-good
Review: On the positive side, there are numerous interesting Transact SQL techniques demonstrated in this book. A couple of them have proved to be very useful to me. I like the exploration of different challenges people face with Transact SQL and the solutions the authors provide. I also like the catalog nature of the book. APress is getting better at this with their books, and this one is pretty good as a reference. On the negative side, the language is misued often in this book. As the old saying goes, "When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." There are several problems attacked in this book that would be better solved with a language other than Transact SQL. It is simply the wrong tool. I could offer several examples, but the most obvious one would be the complex numbers discussion. I see others have mentioned this, too. Not only are complex numbers not best handled by Transact SQL, they cannot even be accurately handled by the language. You will quickly become the victim of rounding errors, performance problems, and other devils if you try something like this in production code. Another negative is that authors don't write that well. I have come not to expect a lot from technical books, so I don't think this is that big of a deal. But I would have to say that the writing quality in this one is low even for technical books. For one thing, the two write completely differently and you can see the different styles contrasting in different sections of the book. Add to this the fact that neither style is particularly lucid or engaging, and you have a book that is an editor or two short of being cogent and readable.
Rating:
Summary: A commentary on Critiques:
Review: A common theme among the negative critiques, is the use of the word "Advanced" in the book's title. Personally, i think the authors should simply have chosen a different title, and half of the negative comments would have been subdued. (Something to signify the apparent intent of the authors, such as "An anthology of T-SQL", or "A Comprehensive Introduction to T-SQL" ...) "Advanced" of course is to some extent a product of one's own thinking, and experience. Another aspect to this subject of "Advanced" has to do with the totally hackneyed, over-worked use of the term "Guru." Someone / something can in fact be "Advanced", and NOT be in the realm of "Guru." This term is COMPLETELY over-used, and over-applied. There are in fact but a very FEW "Guru's" out there in the 'Real World' (Ken Henderson being one.) A Guru is a unique, creative combination of high native intelligence, tireless enthusiasm, and indeterminate hours of true, Hands-On Experience, with the product. A Guru can be identified as someone who ALWAYS seems to know more about the topic, no matter what he/she is asked or challenged with. (As an aside....a "Guru" is NOT always a great, or even good, author ... or, communicator to humans, in general ... although this particular talent definitely is advantageous!) In short, evaluate a product, such as a computer book, on its merits, applicability to the task at hand, and value to YOU. Take with a GIANT grain of salt, any negative critique(s) before choosing .... esp. those propagated from a SINGLE source masquerading as MULTIPLE people!
Rating:
Summary: Crisp, clear and very practical...
Review: This is the most reliable and advanced source of information about TSQL for me. I love this book. It's examples are crisp, clear and very practical. Great job!
Rating: 
Summary: Complete waste of my time
Review: I don't know about you, but doing complex numbers in T-SQL doesn't interest me in the least, especially when the computations are inaccurate and incredibly slow. The whole book is a waste of time. We get to learn how Itzik's code formatting style differs from Tom's (who cares -- who the heck is either of these guys?) We get to learn how neat it is to run into someone with the same first name. And we get to hear about Itzik's martial arts master (really interesting stuff... not). I am returning this one for a refund.
Rating:
Summary: Laughably bad
Review: The book is horrible. From the first page to the last, there's no end to the nonsense. Who cares about Itzik's martial arts instructor? Who cares about whether he met someone with the same name? And the examples...sheesh! Most are either too simple to be really useful (lots of fantasy world scenarios) or get off into things no one cares about. The book was a complete waste of money and I'm returning it!
Rating:
Summary: Techniques borrowed from other books
Review: Almost every technique I've seen in this book can be found in other books. I can't think of any off the top of my head that I haven't seen before. A good number of these are in Henderson's and Klein's books. I wouldn't waste my time with this one. Get the original source books, instead.
Rating:
Summary: One of the Best TSQL books
Review: I have followed Itzik Ben-Gan's columns in SQL Server Magazine and I found his articles addressing some of the trickier problems frequently faced by SQL developers. The solutions presented have almost always been very elegant and changed one's perspective of looking at a whole class of problems.
This book is distilled from a lot of those very clever articles from SQL Server Magazine [and then some] and I heartily recommend this book to tickle your SQL senses. [I am very surprised with the number of negative reviews for this book, believe me, it does not deserve it].
|
