Customer Reviews
Very good book regarding SQL - By: M. Barker, 06 Sep 2008 
This is a fair thick volume containing a wealth of knowledge regarding SQL server. Much of the work & example are specific to MS SQL Server 2005, but where this is the case it is clearly pointed out, often with examples to achieve the same effectin previous version given. That said much of the theory (specificallyin the initial chapters of the book) are more general & can be applied across all major relational database implementing SQL.
The author is clearly an expertin the field.
The book does contain a chapter on Optimising SQL queries, however it is fairly sparse & should not be used as much more than an introduction & "a few pointers" on what to look for when one begins optimisation.
I look forward to reading "Inside Microsoft® SQL Server(tm) 2005: Query Tuning & Optimization" (another bookin the series) but have not done so yet.
The book continues to fairly indepth & advance search techniques, covering subjects such as pivot queries, along with commands like ROLLUP & CUBE.
I would not hesitate to recommend this book to anyone who has some previous experiencein database development & is looking to improve their skillsin the field.
An excellent well written book - By: Glenn, 04 Mar 2008 
I looked through the reviews of the books with SQLin the title & opted for this one as is had the highest number of 5 star reviews.
Having read 5 chaptersin the last day my conclusion is that this is one of the best technical computer books I have ever read, & I have quite a few. The progress through the book is well paced with good thought provoking examples. An acceptable number of times I have had to re-read sections to fully understand the concepts & this has noticably improved by understanding of the SQL language.
I would recommend this book to anyone with equivalent experience, which is a few months of SQL table design/querying such that you have the basics alreadyin hand. This moves you on from the basics.
Get this book if you are looking to improve SQL querying. Do not get this book if you are looking to program data accessin .Net or something else, get a C# book then.
Thorough explanation of SQL language & much more - By: C. Wheeler, 21 Sep 2007 This book is mainly aimed at programmers, but I purchased it along with a number of other books to better understand what SQL is, & how it can help me to write better queriesin an ACCESS database, rather than to write programes. This book is authored by some of the worlds experts on the S.Q.L language & of coarse on the dialect T-SQL. I can't say how useful it will be to programmers, but anyone who isin a scientific or technology design job, will find the subject fascinating & will very quickly begin to understand how a server application works. If you don't understand mathematical logic, then I would strongly recommend your finding a book on it first before attempting to read this book, but any design engineer or scientist should be competent enough not to need to read up on the subject. If all you want to do is write better queries for ACCESS databases though you will be better purchasing "Microsoft Access 2003 Forms, Reports, & Queries", which I purchased from Amazon a while ago. If you want to understand the SQL language behind Access purchase this book also.
Fantastic stuff - By: Eric Le Bouffon, 14 Feb 2007 I have used SQL for about 20 years & TSQL for about 10 and, although I did not finish the book yet, I am delighted with what I have read so far.
Superb & very clearly explained.
A "must by".
Everyone can learn from this book! - By: Martin Bell, 28 Nov 2006 Itzik is an internationally renown lecturer, trainer & writer who anyone familiar with SQL Server will immediately recognise.
The two books that he has authoredin the "Inside SQL Server" series "T-SQL Querying" & "T-SQL Programming" are probably going to be the two defining books on T-SQL written for SQL 2005. They are very well written books, which even the most experienced SQL Server DBA or Developer, will learn from.
