Transact-SQL by William C. Amo, covering all the basics
Written: Oct 07 '09 (Updated Oct 07 '09)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: pretty comprehensive for beginning to intermediate users
Cons: is dated now
The Bottom Line: This a good choice for a thorough introduction to intermediate overview of Transact-SQL.
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| artemis8's Full Review: William C. Amo - Transact-SQL |
I recently started a new job and one of the things this company encourages is learning on the job, which can include reading books. Looking at a senior level coworker's bookshelf, I grabbed Transact-SQL as good reading material during slower parts of the day.
This is an older book and is based on SQL Server 7, but most of the concepts are inherent to the T-SQL language in general and can be applied to later versions as well.
This book is written by William C. Amo and is an IDG Book. This book is really for beginning to intermediate developers using SQL Server databases. At 498 pages it does cover a lot of ground, but it can't go into depth into every area of Transact-SQL, understandably.
The book is divided into four parts, part one covers the SQL Server Programming Environment. Part two covers the Transact-SQL Language. Part three covers SQL Server Programming. And Part four is the appendixes. There is also an index, end user license agreement, and a cd-rom with sample code.
The first three chapters cover setting up SQL Server and what tools you can use. It also talks about security and permissions for users, groups, etc. Just a reminder, there is all on SQL Server 7, so it covers Enterprise Manager, Profiler, and Query Analyzer.
The next fourteen chapters gives lots of examples of how to do different things. It goes over many keywords in the language, like Select, Execute, Where, Like, Distinct, and others. Functions are discussed with ways to manipulate different data, such as strings, dates, and images. We explore joins, views, cursors, stored procedures, triggers, and monitoring.
The final four chapters cover db-library, ODBC, ActiveX data objects, and Open Data Services.
The appendixes are pretty extensive with lists of functions, system stored procedures, technical specifications, and more.
There are plenty of figures (which could show things like ODBC architecture or tabs of the properties pages), Every chapter has a summary at the end. And there are lots of code samples throughout. The author does a good job of explaning what each piece of code is doing and sometimes discusses how there are other options to do the same thing.
There are nice features to make this book easier to read. Code is written in a different font. Sections of each chapter are easily distinguished with larger, bolded font. There are also a few icons, like XREF which will direct you to a different chapter for more information on a topic.
I will admit that Stored Procedures still confuse me some, but overall I found this book to be straight forward and easy to follow. I would consider myself intermediate. I've been working with SQL Server since 2003 at varying levels. While technical, the book does a good job of explaning many different aspects of this language in a way that I think even a beginner would understand if technically minded.
Overall, I found this to be a helpful book. It is educational and can also be used a reference, flipping to the section you are interested in, as needed. While most environments have moved past SQL Server 7, if you notice this lying around (whether on a coworker's bookshelf or cheap at some bookstore) I'd pick it up for a good covering of Transact-SQL.
Recommended:
Yes
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artemis8
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