Lives up to its promise

Lives up to its promise: introduction ito MSSQL Server, no less, no more.
I moved from Oracle and was somehow confused by the "database", "filegroups" etc.
I've got my answers here (and from couple more titles, to be sure)
I neither had problems with instalation, nor with running the examples (save for one: the
chapter on cursor sports keyword DEALLOCATED, has to be - DEALLOCATE; had to check BOL on that)
The Transact-SQL examples could be better (I know PL/SQL, so I had some base here), but again
the book does not claim to teach T-SQL..
The code snippets sometime seem to be taken out of the contexts of bigger procedures, and
I had to figure out how to fit them in; the usp_FindFactorial example seems too complex for
the task it solves (it uses intermediate table to accumulate results
instead of calling itself recursively; should it then be a function?),
but my understanding is that the elegancy was sacrificed to cram in more techniques than requred.
My examples did run correctly, though
After I was through with the book, I had to buy an additional one on Transact-SQL
(IMHO: O'Reily's book Transact-SQL Programming did NOT live up to my expectattions
and the publisher's reputation; I used Sam's T-SQl in 21 days, and then Ken Henderson's book)
To sum up: if you are new to SQL server, and find yourself
somewhat overwhelmed by the Books-On-line style
(comes free with every MSSQL Server installation), get this book
NB: better download new installation from microsoft site; the one included with the book does not have latest security patches)

Other Reviews

• Great and easy to understand
• All content removed from CD, only SQL server remains
• Hope this author never works on my Database -
• Great book for beginners! Covers good topics Concisely!
• Lives up to its promise