Real World Software Architecture: Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Unleashed Book Review

Another Unleashed behemoth!!! It is a whopping 1683 of printed pages and 2765 pages when you include the additional chapters available in the eBook you get with the printed book. If this book doesn’t contain the information you need about SQL Server 2012, then you probably won’t find it anywhere.

Just like I am not a server administrator, I am not a Database Administrator (DBA). I don’t want to be a DBA, nothing against DBAs, but I just think it is a full time job. It is not possible for me to keep up with my .NET, iOS, Enterprise Architecture, and Software Architecture skills and also be an effective DBA.

Of course I have to be familiar enough with them to architect scalable, secure, high performing software, so I chose this book as my learning resource. It is a great resource. I have not gone too it and come away disappointed yet.

What does make this nice is there is a lot of developer content included with the book in addition to the DBA topics.

The book is broken down into 10 parts. Below is the entire Table of Contents-

Part I: Welcome to Microsoft SQL Server
Chapter 1. SQL Server 2012 Overview
Chapter 2. What’s New in SQL Server 2012
Chapter 3. Examples of SQL Server Implementations

Part II: SQL Server Tools and Utilities
Chapter 4. SQL Server Management Studio
Chapter 5. SQL Server Command-Line Utilities
Chapter 6. SQL Server Profiler

Part III: SQL Server Administration
Chapter 7. SQL Server System and Database Administration
Chapter 8. Installing SQL Server 2012
Chapter 9. Upgrading to SQL Server 2012
Chapter 10. Client Installation and Configuration
Chapter 11. Database Backup and Restore
Chapter 12. Database Mail
Chapter 13. SQL Server Agent
Chapter 14. Administering SQL Server 2012 with PowerShell
Chapter 15. SQL Server Policy-Based Management

Part IV: SQL Server Security Administration
Chapter 16. Security and Compliance
Chapter 17. Security and User Administration
Chapter 18. Data Encryption

Part V: Database Administration
Chapter 19. Creating and Managing Databases
Chapter 20. Creating and Managing Tables
Chapter 21. Creating and Managing Indexes
Chapter 22. Implementing Data Integrity
Chapter 23. Creating and Managing Views
Chapter 24. Creating and Managing Stored Procedures
Chapter 25. Creating and Managing User-Defined Functions
Chapter 26. Creating and Managing Triggers
Chapter 27. Transaction Management and the Transaction Log
Chapter 28. Database Snapshots
Chapter 29. Database Maintenance

Part VI: SQL Server Performance and Optimization
Chapter 30. Data Structures, Indexes, and Performance
Chapter 31. Understanding Query Optimization
Chapter 32. Query Analysis
Chapter 33. Locking and Performance
Chapter 34. Database Design and Performance
Chapter 35. Monitoring SQL Server Performance
Chapter 36. SQL Server Database Engine Tuning Advisor
Chapter 37. Managing Workloads with the Resource Governor
Chapter 38. A Performance and Tuning Methodology

Part VII: SQL Server High Availability
Chapter 39. SQL Server High Availability Fundamentals
Chapter 40. Data Replication
Chapter 41. Database Mirroring
Chapter 42. SQL Server Failover Clustering
Chapter 43. SQL Server AlwaysOn and Availability Groups

Part VIII: SQL Server Application Development
Chapter 44. What’s New for Transact-SQL in SQL Server 2012
Chapter 45. Transact-SQL Programming Guidelines, Tips, and Tricks
Chapter 46. Advanced Stored Procedure Programming and Optimization
Chapter 47. SQL Server and the .NET Framework
Chapter 48. SQLCLR: Developing SQL Server Objects in .NET
Chapter 49. Using XML in SQL Server 2012
Chapter 50. SQL Server Service Broker
Chapter 51. SQL Server Full-Text Search
Chapter 52. Working with SQL Azure

Part IX: SQL Server Business Intelligence Features
Chapter 53. SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services
Chapter 54. SQL Server Integration Services
Chapter 55. SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services
Chapter 56. Master Data Services and Data Quality Services
Chapter 57. Parallel Data Warehouse

Part X: Bonus Chapters
Chapter 58. Managing Linked Servers
Chapter 59. SQL Server Disaster Recovery Planning
Chapter 60. SQL Server Configuration Options

Almost every chapter begins with a section that covers what is new in SQL Server 2012. There are a ton of diagrams that are really helpful with learning the topics, and a ton of great tables that help to summarize topics.

The thing I like most about this book is the quantity of information about profiling, tracing, monitoring, and performance. There is a whole chapter on locking!!! The authors writing style makes it an easy to read book, or at least as easy as server reading can get.

My only gripe about the book is that over 1000 of the pages are only available in eBook format. It is time to break this book down into 2, or maybe 3 printed volumes. I use eBooks for searching for topics, but do not read them. After 8 - 10 hours a day staring at a computer I don't want to read a book on one. This will be my last edition of this awesome book if I can't get it all in print when the next edition is released.

The code downloads are organized by chapter and usable are very usable. Each chapter has a folder.

If you are in anyway involved with SQL Server 2012, you owe it to yourself to get this book. It will not leave my side!!!!

I highly recommend this book for DBA's, developers, and architects.

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Unleashed

Real World Software Architecture

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Thursday, February 13, 2014

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Unleashed Book Review

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