SQL Developer Book

While travelling this week, I read Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2005 For Developers ISBN 0-7356-1962-X.

It's a whirlwind tour of developer features in Yukon. Peter DeBetta did a good job of writing this. It is a very “readable” book that provides a basic introduction to a large number of features. Peter spends a large part of the book working though .NET and CLR integration but also touches on Notification Services, Service Broker, Reporting Services, Native SOAP interfaces plus some details on the XML data type and enhancements to T-SQL.

I thought his examples in Common Table Expressions (CTE) were much better than I've seen on webcasts where they seem to refer to them like they are just a replacement for temporary tables. They are much more powerful than this and Peter's recursion example gives a much better hint at what's possible with them.

Like any book being built on beta software, there are already problems in the material covered, such as SqlResultSet references, the ExecutePageReader in the ADO.NETv2 section and some of the CLR integration syntax.

But overall, a good introduction for developers wondering what Yukon has to offer for them.