Pro T-SQL 2005 Programmers Guide
(Experts Voice) by Michael Coles
Essential Tool For Sql Developers And Administators
Pro T-SQL 2005 Programmers Guide provides comprehensive and
detailed coverage of all the major features and facilities of T-SQL for SQL
Server 2005. It is designed for all users of T-SQL, database administrators,
systems administrators, application developers, and end-users, who want
to learn how to exploit the power of T-SQL. Whatever you need to do with
T-SQL, youll find it described clearly here.
Stored procedures, triggers, and user-defined functions are only part of
the story. Dynamic SQL, the new XML data type, and SQLCLR
programming are also covered, as well as accessing SQL Server with
ADO.NET. Exception handling and performance are fully covered, too.
This book is truly a complete programmers guide to T-SQL and SQL
Server 2005.

Personal Review: Pro T-SQL 2005 Programmers Guide (Experts
Voice) by Michael Coles
Short Summary:
Pro T-SQL 2005 Programmer's Guide book examines SQL Server 2005 T-
SQL from a developer's perspective. It covers a wide range of developer-
specific topics in SQL Server 2005. This book covers many newly
introduced topics in depth. This book is written as a practical and useful
guide to help database developers who mainly deals with T-SQL. This
book is really hit the spot with appropriate .NET code at few places where
needed. This book assumes a basic knowledge of SQL but it is really easy
for new beginners developers to understand and advanced developers to
enjoy further reading.
Detailed Summary:
One thing I really liked about this book is that it can be either read cover to
cover, or it can be used as a reference guide for one particular topic. Index
of this book is extremely well organized and aids to find the right topic very
quickly. Books is structure is many chapters and each chapter justifies the
chapters with good details and proper amount of examples.
Each chapter has excellent advice and knowledge and filled with sample
code (available online). The book is targeted specifically at SQL Server
2005 and the innovative ways to code T-SQL, new functions and
commands. If is very easy to get started with this book and it immerses in
comprehensive reading in no time. This book addresses many details and
comparisons with T-SQL in very organized way. The examples are in very
accurate and useful as well sufficient to targeted topics. This book
addresses many of the real world issues with examples, discussions and
solutions.
This book start with providing a brief history of T-SQL and the ANSI SQL
standards. SQLCMD and SQL Server Management Studio are new tools
to explore SQL Server 2005 and are covered in depth in beginning of the
book. Chapters which covers Common Table Expressions (CTEs), new
datatypes, operators, keywords, functions, and control of flows are really
interesting and with necessary explanation. Readers of my blog are very
well aware of my interests in Error handling and debugging. Interesting
enough for me there is one whole chapter dedicated to that. The regular T-
SQL concepts which I write a lot about Stored Procedure, Triggers and
Dynamic SQL each have their own chapter. One thing many T-SQL book
does not cover in depth is XML, XQuery and XPath which are properly
discussed and their importance is explained properly. Last three chapter of
the book which covers SQLCLR, .NET Client Programming and HTTP
Endpoints requires the Microsoft .NET FrameWork 2.0, as it contains some
code which are written in VB and C#.
One thing which I always liked in any database book is, use of sample
database AdventureWorks. I strongly believe that all the example should

be independent from previous examples and should use default database.
If you have not installed default database AdventureWorks, you can get its
latest location by searching in my blog SQLAuthority.com. All the script of
examples are available to download online. No book is free from the errors
and website for this book have errata list, which is surprisingly very small.
I will list few tips from book which interested me. This will give brief idea
how good this book is.
"TABLESAMPLE always returns an approximate number of rows because
of the way it samples data. The required percentage is the number of data
pages SQL Server retreves in full to fulfill your TABLESAMPLE request.
The number of rows returned by TABLESAMPLE will often be slightly less,
or greater, than the specified amount."
"Anytime you use dynamic SQL, make sure that you take precautions
against SQL injection, that is, malicious SQL Code being inserted into your
SQL statements. In this instance we're using the QUOTENAME function to
quote the column names being dynamically generated to help avoid SQL
injection problems."
Following one example really caught my eyes while reading the book. It
seems Author accurately described the situation and put his suggestion
regarding syntax.
"The ANSI SQL:2003 standard includes a MERGE statement that performs
the same function as the upsert type of SP. The prerelease versions of
SQL Server 2005 included the MERGE statement. Though it was well-
publicized during the prerelease period, the MERGE statement was
unceremoniously dropped from the production version. We can only hope
that Microsoft brings it back sometime in the near future."
Good news is Microsoft have included the Authors request in future
version of SQL Server. SQL Server 2008 CTP 4 has included MERGE
Keyword.
Rating: 4 and 1/2 stars
In Summary, A book for every developer who want to take full advantage
of the power of T-SQL on SQL Server 2005.
Pinal Dave
Principal Database Administrator
(blog.sqlauthority.com)
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