Welcome to my first book review! As part of the process of arranging for swag for SQLSaturday, I’ve encountered a number of publishers that have agreed to donate books to our event in exchange for book reviews. Obviously, they’d like favorable reviews, but I don’t feel obligated to hold back any legitimate criticisms that I may have of their material. I do think this is a good opportunity to expand my own writing skills, plus encourage me to read more.
I’ve been studing for my MCITP: Database Administrator exams for some time; I picked up Jorden’s Street Smarts a while back, and have slowly been easing my way through it. other things seem to occupy my time, so I’ve been unable to fully commit to taking the exam. However, that’s no fault of the author. He does a great job of simplifying the material that will be covered on the Microsoft exam 70-431, and it really is framed in terms of common “street” scenarios that a typical DBA might encounter.
The book is laid out in four phases: Installation and Configuration, Implementing High Availability, Maintaining and Automating, and finally, Monitoring and Troubleshooting. Each phase is comprised of tasks; for every task, there’s a description of a plausible scenario, followed by a step-by-step explanation of how to do the task using SQL Server Management Studio. There’s lots of pictures (probably because the exam emphasises the use of the GUI), and it’s a very easy read. Unfortunately, there’s only so much you can do to make this material exciting. As a development-oriented DBA, I’ve been sitting for months on the second section (mainly because it’s the stuff I don’t do on a day-to-day basis anymore), and even now, I’m dreading cracking it back open again.
The book is well-written, and if I were more enthralled with the material, I think I would actually enjoy using it as a study guide. It’s better than many other certification books I’ve encountered, because I think the author really tries to use examples that are realistic (rather than simply trying to teach the test). If you’re looking to upgrade from a SQL Server 2000 MCDBA to the MCTS SQL Server 2005 cert, this is a good place to start.
