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5 comments about Advanced Transact-SQL for SQL Server 2000.

1. 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!



2. 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!



3. 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.




4. If advanced means more than I know with only 2-1/2 years with Sql then this is not an advanced book. It is mostly puzzles and things like that-not anything really useful in the real world. The worst part of it is all the errors in the code. There must be dozens of these-but where is the errata?
   
   I have a lot of comp. books and this one has more beginner mistakes and typoes than any others I have read. Not advanced and not beginner-not sure who is supposed to read it.



5. problem 1 is that the authors obviously aren't developers. they're a couple of guys who like sql puzzles. much of the code in this book has little or no practical value. you should not use it in production systems because it will not perform well and will be difficult to maintain. it's like they're trying to show off some way of getting a complex result set with a single select and not even thinking about the performance impact of the code or its maintainability. that kind of stuff is cool to newbies, but real engineers know better.
   
   problem 2 is the astoundingly bad advice throughout. the complex numbers discussion doesn't belong in the book and you should not try to implement complex number handling in t-sql unless you want to be out of a job. much of the advice in the book revolves around cool coding tricks that aren't applicable to any real world problem. who cares if you can do something with a single select that most people would take two statements to do? does the code perform better? have you considered what it will be like to tune and maintain? how readable is it?
   
   bottom line here is that the authors are amateurs who really shouldn't be writing a book to instruct others in t-sql. they need to learn some other languages and get beyond the "cool coding tricks" stage to true engineering.

3 comments about Oracle9i Developer: PL/SQL Programming.

1. This book is a text book. It has good exercises to learn from. It is a little difficult to use as a reference book. It could use some more tables and examples.



2. This is a text book - this book is written specifically for college classes. Any books you see that are published by Course Technology are text books.
   This book is written in a format that user's with only SQL knowledge and are brand new to PL/SQL can learn the fundamentals of PL/SQL programming. The text covers all the concepts for the Oracle9i PL/SQL program units certification exam. Every chapter contains hands-on exercises to illustrate each concept. The data files for the book can be downloaded from the publishers web site. Chapters covering dynamic SQL and programming with Oracle object technology is also included.
   Thanks for your interest!



3. I've had the distinct pleasure of being taught by Ms. Casteel for SQL. I later used this book on my own to learn PL/SQL and it is the closest text you will get to having her actually sitting in her room. If you want examples that follow a specific path to building one concept upon another. This textbook is implemented in my local Authorized Oracle Academic Initiative Center so you know you will be getting quality instruction in PL?SQL with this book. I think it beats OraclePress hands down for its accuracy and in-depth description of each concept. Get this book if you ever thought the other publishers tend to be too vague in conveying PL/SQL to you. Worth the money.

5 comments about Oracle Performance Tuning 101.

1. This guy has a clue. "Good" ratios don't mean anything if the users are complaining. EXAMINE THE WAIT STATS. Anyway, this fellow is an Oracle genius and actually has a sense of humor. Loved his explanation of pctfree/pctused. Even a child could understand it!

   My big complaint though (and the reason this did not get 5 stars) is that the #&)@! book falls apart. The binding is cheap or something. I have other books in this series and they have all fallen apart too. I guess Elmers Glue doesn't work on 400 page books. Other than that, awesome book.




2. The book makes little assumptions about the readers skill level thus covering many otherwise ignored aspects of tuning.
   It is interpersed by many highlights and references from outside the realm of databases to buttress some points.
   Covers performance tuning and especially the important views v$system_event,v$session_event,and v$session_wait views properly
   Great book to read



3. Gaja knows his stuff, he is the guru. Tuning 101 clearly defines a method to the madness of Oracle tuning. Dig into the wait events, figure out where and what the problem is. While tuning is a art, a scientific methodology can resolve even the most difficult problem. Great writing style, with a bit of humor thrown in!



4. Two stars may be a little harsh; I'm sure the author is very knowledgable. However, there is a difference between making a lot of true statements and imparting knowledge to someone else (explaining).

   First, be warned the book only is relevant to Oracle 7 and 8i. Oracle 9 tuning is not addressed. A lot has changed in Oracle 9 because of the automatic tuning features, so I feel this book is out of date and it is shameful that book sellers disguise this fact.

   There is a lot wrong with this book from the standpoint of someone who needs to tune Oracle. If you are a full time DBA and spend a lot of time studying Oracle and Oracle is your life, then perhaps this is a useful book for your collection. In that respect, the "101" in the title is perhaps accurate - it opens the subjects that you will need to dig a lot deeper into in order to really get something useful done. However, if you need a guide to tuning your Oracle database, you probably will be lost and frustrated using this book.

   The author in opening chapters lays out a tuning methodology which is basically "measure performance; locate bottleneck; tune appropriate component". Then he pretty much abandons that methodology and stuffs the book with brief descriptions of how Oracle does this and that, some related parameters, and some very general advice to wrap it up. But unless you take it much further yourself with other references and deep study, you will be hard pressed to know how to fix anything.

   Many Oracle books I have come across suffer from the problem of being either 3 times too long or 1/3 as long as necessary. In other words, the author needs to choose a useful format: either simply provide an overview roadmap to more detailed information, or go the distance and provide a detailed enough amount of information to get the job done. This author similarly needs more or less to make this text useful.

   I can't say the book is useless. Occasionally the author does give a brief formula or rule of thumb for sizing some parameter. But they are few and far between, and usually not in very important areas.

   What most of us need is a "Tuning Guide". That is, a step-by-step methodology where measurements are taken and parameters are estimated based on the measurements for tuning the database. Iterative tuning may be required, but that's OK if it is layed out as such. As you work your way through the methodology, your Oracle instance and application come into "tune". I don't know if such a methology can be designed; experts may claim it requires "intuition" and "experience". If so, then don't bother writing a book; otherwise, it is the author's job to turn intuition and experience into a methodology that others can follow.

   If a "Tuning Guide" is not the intent of the author but rather more deep understanding, then the author must follow the approach of building a crystal clear "model" of the system which identifies measurement parameters for estimating the state of a real system and identifies the "control parameters" which affect the performance of the system. Then the reader should be able to measure the system and perhaps deduce how to control the performance. This book falls far short of that goal.

   Here is an example from the book that left me helpless:

   "CAUTION: It is very counterproductive to Oracle system performance to over-allocate memory to one or more components of your shared pool. Over-allocation of memory here can and will cause significant parsing delays (in some cases we have noticed ten-minute response times for a query such as - select * from dual;)."

   Then the author does not provide any real criteria as to when I might be straying into such a disasterous region. He goes on to talk about "free memory" for various shared pool area pools, and on careful study you might deduce that too much "free memory" could be a related problem, but then rather than give any formulas or hard advice, he covers his "bases" with the wishy-washy statement: "The key here is to manage the space appropriately and make use of all the available pools in your version of Oracle." I'd love to - tell me how!

   I won't dwell on his erratic writing style which frequently tosses in chirpy lingo such as the subheading: "Hey, Oracle - What Is Your Plan of Action (P.O.A.)?". His use of analogies is weak and half-hearted such as his analogy for resource contention with "children all wanting the same toy".

   Basically, you know when you have a killer book that is a great tool in your toolkit. This one ain't it.




5. There is a lack of vision in this book as to what it wants to achieve. For a "101" book I was expecting to have a systematic approach to diagnosing and tuning system performance. Instead it wastes a lot of time on very general statements such as "choose the right balance", "find the bottleneck and then tune it" etc. I would expect that such things are obvious in fixing any problem.i.e. you understand the nature of the problems and then fix them.
   
   There is a start along the direction of using a systematic approach but the author doesn't follow through.

1 comments about SAS 9.1 SQL Procedure User's Guide.

1. Save your money and just use the SAS online documentation. This title of this book says that it is a user's guide (if I am not mistaken, it is simply a print version of the online documentation), and it certainly reads like one, i.e. dry and boring. If you are a beginner, you will either fall asleep or be so confused. If you are an intermediate SAS programmer looking for a reference, just use the online documentation, as suggested earlier.

1 comments about Dimensional Data Warehousing with MySQL: A Tutorial.

1. I'm new to MySQL and this was my first book on the subject. The author has done a great job of writing for a specific skillset and not wasting our time with alot of fundamentals or too advanced stuff. I'm somewhat learning challenged and found the organization of the material to aid greatly in my grasp of the subject.

2 comments about Pro SQL Server 2005 Assemblies (Pro).

1. Do not be mistaken the book is NOT a light read but the knowlege that the author is able to impart is fantastic.
   I found the first part of the book really informative especially the parts dealing with User Defined Functions and the User Defined Data types.
   One must try out the examples in order to glean the most from the book. The last chapter's examples involve the use of Web Services. This is a must!!
   Over all I would really recommend the book to the SQL Server Developer.



2. The ability to run .NET code within the database makes SQL Server even more valuable - and the need for Pro SQL Server 2005 Assemblies even more obvious. Here's a guide to building each type of SQL Server assembly, packed with examples geared to common business problems and solutions, and tips on accessing external data sources and web services. Code projects in C# and Visual Basic are available from the Apress web site, making this expert's guide even more useful.

2 comments about Microsoft SQL Server High Availability (Windows Server System).

1. In the early days of PC's no one thought much about trying to keep up a system 24x7x365. The hardware wouldn't do it, the software wouldn't do it, and for a system that was primarily something you used for personal use on your desktop it really didn't matter much. You probably turned it off each evening anyway.
   
   But those times have changed. The modern PC is a PC in name only. Put in a couple of high speed Pentium 4's or Opterons and you have a system more powerful than those running airline reservations systems a few years back. Add the web and e-commerce and you have systems that you really don't want to go down at all. Now you are into the realm of High Availability or since this is the computer industry - HA.
   
   Microsoft, in the past was not too concerned with HA. If you wanted HA you had to go Unix. But in recent years Microsoft has developed Cluster Services for both the operating system and SQL Server along with other technologies to enable HA.
   
   This book is divided into three main sections:
   
   Understanding High Availability
   Choosing the Right High Availability Approaches
   Implementing High Availability.
   
   In summary, this book is HA the Microsoft Way.



2. Microsoft is attempting to move its SQL Server deeper into large scale corporate usage. And this book is a good reflection of the strategy. Bertucci directs it at IT managers, CTOs or CIOs who are looking for a "high availability" solution. He defines this as an availability of 95-99.4%. Notice that the book shies away from "extreme availability", which is more than 99.4%. As he explains, there are nonlinearities in costs for the latter that make it prohibitive for most companies. Whereas high availability is affordable in far more circumstances.
   
   Implicitly, the book shows that Microsoft is staying away from the extreme case, for now. It cedes that ground to IBM and Oracle.
   
   Bertucci goes into a moderate level of technical detail about what SQL Server offers for high availability. Like hardware replication using RAID arrays and hot swappable components. Though he warns of the costs of the latter. There is considerable detail about data replication and clustering. These are separate issues that have been heavily built up here in functionality. Quite mature.
   
   As an aside, the capabilities described here also help preserve some operational distance between SQL Server and the low end open source rivals of MySQL and Postgres.

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