March 27, 2009 at 5:48 am
Jeff Moden (3/21/2009)
As a side bar... I think that it's a real shame that, IMHO, there are no good books on SQL Server. Sure, many of them have their high spots but, for the most part, the garbage and the unnecessary rhetoric in them make them all very not worth while spending between $40 and $100 bucks for. And, to be sure, I'm not singling out any of the authors on that... heh... I think they're all a huge let down for one reason or another.
Jeff - maybe it's time to write one? If you could get some of the members from SQLServerCentral to contribute you'd have the best of the best.
March 27, 2009 at 7:39 am
That's an excellent suggestion, Mark! I'd definitely want to read the end product.
March 27, 2009 at 8:21 am
Maybe we need a poll to push Jeff along 😉
March 27, 2009 at 8:28 am
Perhaps we can all start another thread to collect ideas what should be included. Hmmm, this smells of "Book by committee"...
March 27, 2009 at 8:43 am
Jeff should do it.
"Pork Chops for the DBA" by Jeff Moden
"SQL Server Performance Tuning by Pork Choping Deveopers" by Jeff Moden
"Better Performance by True Set Based Operations and Pork Chops" by Jeff Moden
"Pork Chops" by Jeff Moden (although that one may not sell as well to the database geek set).
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
March 27, 2009 at 9:41 am
I remember a while back Jeff said we (SSC) should write a book in Performance when I said Microsoft hired some one who did not know the difference between UNION and UNION ALL to write SQL Server 2000 performance tuning book.
I agree with most of what Jeff is saying the link below is Ben-Gan's book errata for SQL Server 2005 when I browsed the book at Barnes and Noble I said OPS some one forgot to tell them the product changed. I have many SQL Server books but I will only buy BI related books now all others the BOL is better than most books.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/920141
Kind regards,
Gift Peddie
March 27, 2009 at 6:10 pm
Gift Peddie (3/27/2009)
I remember a while back Jeff said we (SSC) should write a book in Performance when I said Microsoft hired some one who did not know the difference between UNION and UNION ALL to write SQL Server 2000 performance tuning book.I agree with most of what Jeff is saying the link below is Ben-Gan's book errata for SQL Server 2005 when I browsed the book at Barnes and Noble I said OPS some one forgot to tell them the product changed. I have many SQL Server books but I will only buy BI related books now all others the BOL is better than most books.
Here's what Microsoft says at the bottom of that page...
Microsoft Press is committed to providing informative and accurate books. All comments and corrections listed above are ready for inclusion in future printings of this book. If you have a later printing of this book, it may already contain most or all of the above corrections.
Heh... the books are, indeed, mostly accurate for whatever is in the book. They just forget to do things like test the code with more than 20 rows. You can't really blame them for things they don't know {insert really nasty, sarcastic looking, ear to ear grin here}.
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
March 27, 2009 at 6:36 pm
Heh... the books are, indeed, mostly accurate for whatever is in the book. They just forget to do things like test the code with more than 20 rows. You can't really blame them for things they don't know {insert really nasty, sarcastic looking, ear to ear grin here}.
Jeff,
That is a better book the worst is a none SQL Server book but still Microsoft press an exam prep book comes with 89 pages errata. I had to redirect MSDN forum users to other books so they can pass the exam. My question is what are the people who hand out these useless books contracts still doing at Microsoft?
http://www.amazon.com/MCTS-Self-Paced-Training-Exam-70-536/dp/0735622779
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/923018
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/935218/
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949730/
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949734/
:Whistling: :hehe:
Kind regards,
Gift Peddie
March 27, 2009 at 6:37 pm
Steve Jones - Editor (3/27/2009)
Maybe we need a poll to push Jeff along 😉
Heh... I know you... with all the talk of ancient weapons by the Ninja's on this forum, you really mean "pole". Yep... I'll be keeping my eye on you. 😛
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
March 27, 2009 at 6:39 pm
Grant Fritchey (3/27/2009)
Jeff should do it."Pork Chops for the DBA" by Jeff Moden
"SQL Server Performance Tuning by Pork Choping Deveopers" by Jeff Moden
"Better Performance by True Set Based Operations and Pork Chops" by Jeff Moden
"Pork Chops" by Jeff Moden (although that one may not sell as well to the database geek set).
How about the uplifting and ever popular [font="Arial Black"]"RBAR - Death by SQL" [/font] 😀
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
March 27, 2009 at 6:54 pm
Jeff Moden (3/27/2009)
How about the uplifting and ever popular [font="Arial Black"]"RBAR - Death by SQL" [/font] 😀
I don't know. That sounds... almost... on topic. :hehe:
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
March 28, 2009 at 6:48 am
Gift Peddie (3/27/2009)
That is a better book the worst is a none SQL Server book but still Microsoft press an exam prep book comes with 89 pages errata. I had to redirect MSDN forum users to other books so they can pass the exam. My question is what are the people who hand out these useless books contracts still doing at Microsoft?
I think I recall seeing an email requesting authors for that book. With the rate they were offering and the exceedingly tight deadline, I'm not surprised they had a million errors in it.
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability
March 28, 2009 at 7:24 am
In the Readiness Review assessment on the CDROM one of the questions reads:
"You are creating a new collection type that must be iterated using for-each loop. Which of the following interfaces should you implement? (Choose all that apply)
ICollection
IDictionaryEnumerator
IDictionary
IEnumerable
IEqualityCOmparer"
The assessment states that the answers are IDictionaryEnumerator and IEnumerator.
The correct answers are: ICollection and IEnumerator.
Gail,
I got the above from the first errata when a programmer does not know the above it is cruel to hire said programmer to write a book for one of the most difficult exams Microsoft is offering. This is covered first page of the collection chapter of Herbert Schildt. There are good .NET writers it takes humility to ask them to write these books. I think it is unconscionable to provide useless study guides written by idiots.
The Ben-Gan errata covered about 10 percent of the book and it was only 15 pages but this book comes with 89 pages so it covered about 80 to 90 percent of the book. If that much was corrected why was the book published?
Kind regards,
Gift Peddie
March 28, 2009 at 8:18 am
Heh... all of these conversations have made me revisit some of the books I did buy including some of the ones being talked about. And THAT made me realize why DBA's don't buy a lot of books... so, to answer the original question on this thread, the answer (for me, anyway) is that the availability of code makes the big difference. I actually wouldn't have bought some of those books except that lot's of folks rave about them and I mostly bought them in self-defense. Otherwise, I simply wouldn't have bought them because it's easier to search an electronic book and it's a whole lot easier to try the code samples on an e-book (or CD) than it is to maticulously type out the sometimes lengthy code examples. Had the books been like the books of the '90's, CD pasted into the back cover, I'd very likely have bought the books before it became a matter of self defense. Why is the code so bloody important? Sergiy taught me that fine lesson many years ago... "A Developer must NOT guess... a Developer must KNOW." The only way to know for sure is to test the code and the publishers of books no longer make that easy.
An alternate reason is that some of the code just plain sucks... most books make no disclaimer that the code being discussed that "this solution is not adequate for large" rowsets. Some of the books mentioned in this thread actually do and for that I'm thankful but, why spend so much time teaching people the wrong way to do things. I've seen a fair number of posts where someone will say on a thread "Well, here's the way {famous author} does it" and they sight one of the performance challenged POS code examples without the same warning (or not) that appears in the book. Then there's the fact of code with logic errors in it. There are some authors who, apparently, don't actually test each piece of code even though it may have no syntactical errors in it.
Someone said earlier that they weren't looking for a literary master piece when they bought a technical book... heh... neither am I. But it would be really nice if there were at least one that got to the point, had no technical errors in it, and had some decent usage examples. Really, a whole chapter on a wad of different [font="Arial Black"]wrong [/font]ways to build a Numbers table and no explanation as to how the Numbers table actually works to replace loops is just wrong. That and the fact that there are very few examples of how to use that very powerful tool. And, heh... try to find the Numbers table examples in the Index... it just ain't happenin'.
As to why they publish books with errors in them? The answer is the same as to why there's bad code in the world and I believe Gail mentioned it... bloody "Time to Market" and stupid deadlines. I agree that there should be deadlines on things... just not stupid ones.
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
March 28, 2009 at 10:04 am
Jeff, you probably don't remember, but you helped me once, and I have a tremendous
respect for your technique, knowledge, and for helping me.
I really think you should write sql book(s), if you have not started or done it already.
You have so much knowledge, experience, and incredible technical skills,
not to mention being considerate, thoughtful, meticulous, and
go-above-and-beyond in all your posts that I have seen.
You have no idea how many sql books I have bought, and I can go on with a long
list of my frustrations, which it may take days, and besides that was not my point.
Anyway, I hope you consider writing sql books somedays, and I would
be one of your loyal fans. :).
sqlblue
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