SQL Server 2008 Administration isn't a standard SQL Server tutorial-there are dozens of those to choose from. Instead, this book breaks down the role of "SQL Server Administrator" into its key focus areas and tasks and details the techniques and best practices that make an administrator effective. In this book, a reader can quickly identify a task and find the best practice associated with it. For example, a reader looking for information about indexing would find step-by-step procedures for identifying and dropping unused indexes, creating missing indexes, selecting the appropriate clustered index, and so forth.
Each technique is presented in a clear, straightforward style and in the order of the typical lifecycle of a SQL Server system. This allows a reader to easily open the book at the appropriate page and focus on what you need to know for each specific situation.
While most techniques will work for all versions of SQL Server, this book is current for the recent final release of SQL Server 2008.
Customer Reviews & Comments
I will start by saying that I truly enjoyed this book. The book is written in a casual way and is not filled with tons of code, concepts are explained well and where needed images are included to help you understand it better. I also like the fact that this is not a 1000 page monster which weighs more than my laptop; it is 464 pages and fits nicely in my bag.
This book is filled with best practices and common sense. Each chapter ends with best practice consideration. The 3 page best practices considering security section in chapter 6 is something every SQL Server developer, administrator and especially an accidental DBA should memorize.
The suggested work plan for a DBA is something I needed for a long time; it is there all in one place broken down by daily, weekly and monthly tasks. Besides best practices I found that this book also has the top 25 DBA worst practices.....I guarantee that almost everyone will have a couple of items on that list; now you have a chance to eliminate some of those.
Things that were introduced in SQL Server 2008 are marked with <em
