Book Review: “Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2008: T-SQL Programming” by Itzik Ben-Gan et al

July 23, 2012 · 1 min read

In this the next few lines, I will be providing a review of the last of Itzik Ben-Gan et al’s “Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2008” series. This last book continues the trend of the in-depth focused coverage of SQL constructs but focuses on programmatic T-SQL constructs rather than Querying ones.

In this 800-page book, the authors cover topics including views, user defined functions, stored procedures, triggers, transactions and concurrency, error handling, temporary tables, cursors and dynamic SQL.

For this third book in Itzik’s sequel, I opted to follow a focused approach that I can refer to in SQL terms as “Index Seeks” rather than my typical favored approach of “index scanning” books. In other words, I have opted this time around to pick topics that I felt I wanted to refresh and enhance my knowledge on than read the complete book as I had done with the second book in the sequel

I greatly appreciated the authors’ efforts to keep all books within the series consistent in style, quality and depth. I continued to the find the use of examples and diagrams very helpful in grasping and retaining advanced concepts while appreciating the depth and practical use cases covered to illustrate some of the less known facts and side effects of the constructs covered therein.

In conclusion, I strongly recommend all three books in Itzik’s Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2008 series as a good SQL Server 2008 shelf reference for those looking to quickly refresh and enhance their knowledge of in-depth SQL Server 2008 content. I also look forward to, time permitting, to reading and reviewing the authors’ SQL 2012 series in the near future.

Many thanks to the O’Reilly User Group Program and its support of our West Palm Beach Developers’ Group.

--Sam Abraham

This article is part of the GWB Archives. Original Author: Sam Abraham

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