Product Description

"I come from a T-SQL background, so when I first laid my eyes on SQL Server 2005, I was shocked--and then, I was scared! I didn't have a CLR or XML background and suddenly had an urgent need to learn it. SQL Server 2005 is too big of a release to learn from the books online. Fortunately, now there is a book for developers who need to go from SQL Server 2000 to SQL Server 2005 and to do it as painlessly as possible. Basically, it's one-stop shopping for serious developers who have to get up to speed quickly. I'll keep this one on my desk--not on my bookshelf. Well done, Bob and Dan!" --Dr. Tom Moreau SQL Server MVP and Monthly Columnist SQL Server Professional, Brockman Moreau Consulting Inc. "A SQL book truly for developers, from two authorities on the subject. I'll be turning to this book first when I need to understand a component of SQL Server 2005." --Matt Milner Instructor Pluralsight "An excellent book for those of us who need to get up to speed on what's new in SQL Server 2005. The authors made sure this book includes the final information for the release version of the product. Most other books out now are based on beta versions.It covers key areas from XML and SQLCLR to Notification Services. Although the wide variety of information is great, my favorite part was the advice given on when to use what, and how performance is affected." --Laura Blood Senior Software Developer Blue Note Computing, Inc. "SQL Server 2005 is a massive release with a large number of new features. Many of these features were designed to make SQL Server a great application development platform. This book provides comprehensive information about the SQL Server features of most interest to application developers. The lucid text and wealth of examples will give a developer a clear understanding of how to use SQL Server 2005 to a whole new class of database applications. It should be on every SQL Server developer's bookshelf." --Roger Wolter Solutions Architect Microsoft Corporation "While there will be a lot of good books on SQL Server 2005 development, when people refer to the 'bible,' they'll be talking about this book." --Dr.Greg Low Senior Consultant Readify Pty Ltd "SQL Server 2005 is loaded with new features and getting a good overview is essential to understand how you can benefit from SQL Server 2005's features as a developer. Bob and Dan's book goes beyond enumerating the new SQL Server 2005 features, and will provide you with lots of good examples. They did a good job striking a balance between overview and substance." --Michiel Wories Senior Program Manager, SQL Server Microsoft Corporation Few technologies have been as eagerly anticipated as Microsoft SQL Server 2005. Now, two SQL Server insiders deliver the definitive hands-on guide--accurate, comprehensive, and packed with examples. A Developer's Guide to SQL Server 2005 starts where Microsoft's documentation, white papers, and Web articles leave off, showing developers how to take full advantage of SQL Server 2005's key innovations. It draws on exceptional cooperation from Microsoft's SQL Server developers and the authors' extensive access to SQL Server 2005 since its earliest alpha releases. You'll find practical explanations of the new SQL Server 2005 data model, built-in .NET hosting, improved programmability, SQL:1999 compliance, and much more. Virtually every key concept is illuminated via sample code that has been fully updated for and tested with the shipping version of the product. Key coverage includes *Using SQL Server 2005 as a .NET runtime host: extending the server while enhancing security, reliability, and performance*Writing procedures, functions, triggers, and types in .NET languages*Exploiting enhancements to T-SQL for robust error-handling, efficient queries, and improved syntax*Effectively using the XML data type and XML queries*Implementing native SQL Server 2005 Web Services*Writing efficient, robust clients for SQL Server 2005 using ADO.NET, classic ADO, and other APIs*Taking full advantage of user-defined types (UDTs), query notifications, promotable transactions, and multiple active result sets (MARS)*Using SQL Management Objects (SMO), SQL Service Broker, and SQL Server Notification Services to build integrated applications

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #687849 in Books
• Published on: 2006-05-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 1088 pages

From the Back Cover

"I come from a T-SQL background, so when I first laid my eyes on SQL Server 2005, I was shocked--and then, I was scared! I didn't have a CLR or XML background and suddenly had an urgent need to learn it. SQL Server 2005 is too big of a release to learn from the books online. Fortunately, now there is a book for developers who need to go from SQL Server 2000 to SQL Server 2005 and to do it as painlessly as possible. Basically, it's one-stop shopping for serious developers who have to get up to speed quickly. I'll keep this one on my desk--not on my bookshelf. Well done, Bob and Dan!"

--Dr. Tom Moreau

SQL Server MVP and Monthly Columnist

SQL Server Professional, Brockman Moreau Consulting Inc.

"A SQL book truly for developers, from two authorities on the subject. I'll be turning to this book first when I need to understand a component of SQL Server 2005."

--Matt Milner

Instructor

Pluralsight

"An excellent book for those of us who need to get up to speed on what's new in SQL Server 2005. The authors made sure this book includes the final information for the release version of the product. Most other books out now are based on beta versions. It covers key areas from XML and SQLCLR to Notification Services. Although the wide variety of information is great, my favorite part was the advice given on when to use what, and how performance is affected."

--Laura Blood

Senior Software Developer

Blue Note Computing, Inc.

"SQL Server 2005 is a massive release with a large number of new features. Many of these features were designed to make SQL Server a great application development platform. This book provides comprehensive information about the SQL Server features of most interest to application developers. The lucid text and wealth of examples will give a developer a clear understanding of how to use SQL Server 2005 to a whole new class of database applications. It should be on every SQL Server developer's bookshelf."

--Roger Wolter

Solutions Architect

Microsoft Corporation

"While there will be a lot of good books on SQL Server 2005 development, when people refer to the 'bible,' they'll be talking about this book."

--Dr. Greg Low

Senior Consultant

Readify Pty Ltd

"SQL Server 2005 is loaded with new features and getting a good overview is essential to understand how you can benefit from SQL Server 2005's features as a developer. Bob and Dan's book goes beyond enumerating the new SQL Server 2005 features, and will provide you with lots of good examples. They did a good job striking a balance between overview and substance."

--Michiel Wories

Senior Program Manager, SQL Server

Microsoft Corporation

Few technologies have been as eagerly anticipated as Microsoft SQL Server 2005. Now, two SQL Server insiders deliver the definitive hands-on guide--accurate, comprehensive, and packed with examples. A Developer's Guide to SQL Server 2005 starts where Microsoft's documentation, white papers, and Web articles leave off, showing developers how to take full advantage of SQL Server 2005's key innovations. It draws on exceptional cooperation from Microsoft's SQL Server developers and the authors' extensive access to SQL Server 2005 since its earliest alpha releases.

You'll find practical explanations of the new SQL Server 2005 data model, built-in .NET hosting, improved programmability, SQL:1999 compliance, and much more. Virtually every key concept is illuminated via sample code that has been fully updated for and tested with the shipping version of the product.

Key coverage includes

• Using SQL Server 2005 as a .NET runtime host: extending the server while enhancing security, reliability, and performance
• Writing procedures, functions, triggers, and types in .NET languages
• Exploiting enhancements to T-SQL for robust error-handling, efficient queries, and improved syntax
• Effectively using the XML data type and XML queries
• Implementing native SQL Server 2005 Web Services
• Writing efficient, robust clients for SQL Server 2005 using ADO.NET, classic ADO, and other APIs
• Taking full advantage of user-defined types (UDTs), query notifications, promotable transactions, and multiple active result sets (MARS)
• Using SQL Management Objects (SMO), SQL Service Broker, and SQL Server Notification Services to build integrated applications

About the Author

Bob Beauchemin is a database-centric application practitioner and architect, DBA, instructor, course author, and writer. He's Director of Developer Skills at SQLskills (www.sqskills.com), and teaches his SQL Server 2005 courses around the world. Bob has written extensively on SQL Server and other databases, database security, ADO.NET, and OLE DB.

Dan Sullivan runs his own consulting company, does training for Pluralsight (www.pluralsight.com), and has worked with SQL Server since it was first distributed by Microsoft and ran on OS/2. Dan speaks and writes widely on SQL Server.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Bob Beauchemin

Wow. I can't believe it's been almost two years since I was writing the preface for our first book, A First Look at SQL Server 2005 for Developers. Those two years, and the two years before, have been a whirlwind of working with the SQL Server product, including teaching, consulting, writing, and conferences. I still haven't stopped to catch my breath. SQL Server 2005 was officially launched in September 2005. And we've been working on enhancements to the First Look book since it was published in mid-2004. As with any book on a beta version of a product, the product itself changed after the book was published. In fact, one of the first changes was a feature cut that came two weeks after the book shipped. Keeping up has been a high-energy endeavor, because since beta 2, there were an order of magnitude more additions and enhancements than cuts. This book is the product of the great response we got to the First Look book and the answer to the frequently asked question, "When are you guys going to do an update?" I'd say that this is quite a bit more than an update, however. We've included lots of new and revised material; there are too many changes to enumerate. There is even a section on best practices because at this point in time, the early adopters who shipped revised versions of their software that works with SQL Server 2005 have already had a few years to practice.

We did, however, wait for the "golden bits" to appear before embarking on the last of the series of revisions. This turned out to be a good move, as the implementation details of a few of the features changed slightly up until the last candidate release. This is a Sisyphus-like strategy for the most part, however, as the software keeps improving. As I write this, Service Pack 1 has been announced and may indeed change things slightly. Work has begun on the next release of SQL Server, code-named Katamai, and the next version of the .NET Framework is currently available in beta. Software products are never static. Dan and I will be including the code samples from the book and updates on our Web sites:

http://www.SQLskills.com (Books section)
http://www.pluralsight.com

We'll also be writing about SQL Server 2005 features and enhancements in our blogs.

The ANSI SQL 2003 specification "shipped," too, and included a slightly different version of Part 14: XML Related Specifications (SQL/XML). The W3C XQuery committee is closing in on becoming a recommendation. As an additional point of note, since the First Look book was published, both of Microsoft's biggest competitors in the database space have released .NET Framework procedure inclusion (although integration is not as tight) and have announced or released XQuery support.

By now, you probably have heard about the .NET Framework-based procedures, the inclusion of the XML data type and XQuery language, the enhancements to T-SQL to support robust error handling and queries against hierarchical data and open-schema based designs, and versioningbased transaction isolation. These features, however, combined with inclusion of an asynchronous messaging system, SQL Server Service Broker, permit SQL Server to move toward a Service Oriented Database Architecture. Event Notifications, Query Notifications, and database mail are the first manifestations of this type of architecture; it moves SQL Server toward being more of a system that responds asynchronously to external events, rather than being strictly connection-and-statement-based. Service Broker, combined with CLR procedural code and XML data support, enables database programmers to build their own service-based applications. The inclusion of support for Web Services as an alternate client stack is another manifestation of this architecture. This is such a compelling programming model that Microsoft plans to include similar functionality as part of the

next series of .NET Framework enhancements. When this framework functionality is integrated with Service Broker's robust transport and built-in transactional and database support, it should make for a powerful combination. This architecture is a quantum change because it enables building scalable, robust, distributed database applications by designing distribution of processing in from the ground up.

It's still my conclusion that there's quite a bit in SQL Server 2005 for just about every developer, DBA, application designer, business analyst, and data miner. I'm still reading in some places (though not as many as in 2002) that the new features just aren't that interesting; they're more like a recitation of glitzy acronyms than substance. So I'll end this with the same mid1981 personal history lesson.

I'm working for an insurance company in Seattle, and we're planning to convert our indexed file data, which we'd just converted from ISAM (indexed sequential access method) to VSAM (virtual storage access method), to a better, more robust database engine. The one we had in mind was IMS (IBM's Information Management System product). The salesperson, however, wants us to look at some newfangled database called SQL/DS (which eventually became DB2). After designing some tables and playing around with some queries, we asked some tough questions like "Why does it matter that a database engine is built on a mathematical theory?" and "Why would you want to learn a foreign query language called SQL rather than using nice, fast assembly language or COBOL programs?" and "Why did you just decompose our 2 nice, understandable records into 30 little tables just to join them back together again?" and "Why does it go so slow?" It was the beginning of the relational era. Relational engines weren't all that optimized yet, and smart programmers with custom navigation-based code could beat the engine every time.

In 1981, we sent the product back, and I didn't learn SQL until 1987. By then, I was a bit behind on the learning curve, but relational engines were a heck of a lot faster, and programmers wrote a little SQL and much less procedural and navigational code. And they got much more work done. So I smile when I see folks shake their heads about the XML data models or the XQuery Formal Semantics. I saw the same raised eyebrows when mixing service-oriented concepts and data first came on the scene. Maybe the

head-shakers are right, but I'm not waiting until 2010 to learn XQuery or how to integrate messaging and databases. It doesn't matter whether you choose to wait, however, or use relational exclusively. SQL Server 2005 and .NET Framework 2.0 have the enabling engines for all these data storage, messaging, and query technologies. And the future portends even more work in these areas.

Portland, Oregon
March 2006

Dan Sullivan

This journey started well over two years ago, when Bob asked me whether I would be interested in joining him in creating a course and book about the "new" version of SQL Server that Microsoft was working on. He said that this would be the biggest release of SQL Server to date and that it would make both XML and the Common Language Runtime first-class citizens of Microsoft's database platform. That sounded good to me, so here I am writing a preface for a book about the shipping version of SQL Server 2005.

One of the first things I realized when I started digging into it was that XML and the CLR integration are just the tip of the iceberg. Just the enhancements to T-SQL are worth upgrading a server. The enhancements in ADO.NET, such as SqlDependency, which keeps an application and a database in sync, are in tune with the needs of applications, and having the same programming model on the client and server made life much simpler, too.

Direct support of XML as a first-class data type in the database gives you the choice of shredding XML data into tables, storing it natively, or even doing some of each based on the needs of the application, not the limitations of the platform.

Likewise, the direct integration of the CLR into the SQL Server runtime gives you a choice of how to implement an operation based on the needs of the application, not the limitations of the platform.

To carry XML and CLR further as first-class citizens, SQL Server 2005 hosts Web Services. Again, this lets you choose how an application connects to SQL Server 2005 based on applications' needs. Applications that connect to a Web Service don't need ADO.NET, ADO, OLE DB, or any other library to make the connections.

SQL Server 2005 opens your choices and widens its applicability to business problems.

But my favorite comes last: Service Broker, the framework for implementing business transactions. The first time I looked at Service Broker, I did a flashback to projects I had worked on in the past and was bowled over by it. It is right on target. All those busywork details I had to code just to move a few things around to match a business process or control resources are now done for me by Service Broker. Service Broker truly is the best thing since sliced bread.

Taken as whole or in pieces, SQL Server 2005 is a huge step forward. Working on the book and explaining to developers as it was changing underneath my feet was a challenge, but well worth it. I couldn't have met that challenge, of course, without the patience, understanding, and love of my wife, Alberta.

Bolton, Massachusetts
March 2006

Customer Reviews

The New Testament
I feel cheated by the publishers of this book, because it was described as a "Bible" for SQL Server 2005: a "definitive hands-on guide" with "virtually every key concept" explained. It does not fit such a description, unless one's idea of a "Bible" can leave out Genesis, Exodus and the rest of the Old Testament.

Beauchemin's and Sullivan's book is a competent rendition of new features in SQL Server 2005, but in order to use it one will have to be thoroughly familiar with previous editions of the database product. Beauchemin and Sullivan fail to provide a first-principles description of SQL Server 2005 capabilities and syntax. Anyone hoping to use this book as a reference will probably be as disappointed in it as I have been.

Look before you buy
Covers writing T-SQL and C# code to be executed/hosted within SQL Server. The authors point out many of the new features of SQL Server 2005.

I found the writing style somewhat disjointed. I just couldn't read it from cover to cover. It reads like a course syllabus. It doesn't really fall into the category of a reference either.

Make sure you skim through this book at your local bookstore before you commit to purchasing it.

Excellent resource for Dev's only
Bob's book is written for the passionate Microsoft developer. DBA's and IT Pro's will find this book useful to have on the shelf, as there are number of features that touch the life of the Admin. Additionally, AW press has released another book, SQL Server 2005 Distilled, if you are looking for something less deep, I would try that book too.
HTH.
Dusty...