SQL Server 2000 Black Book with Cdrom
Patrick Dalton, Paul Whitehead · Coriolis Group Books · 2000
From the Book: Thanks for buying SQL Server 2000 Black Book. Welcome to the most exciting version of Microsoft SQL Server released to date. Whether this is your first exposure to Microsoft SQL Server or you are upgrading from a previous version, you are sure to find SQL Server 2000 a joy to work with. Over the years, Microsoft SQL Server has evolved from a state-of-the-art client/server database platform into a word-class n-tier database platform that delivers all the power and functionality you need to produce both client/server and Web-enabled applications that will simply amaze your users. Here is the database platform that will take you into the new millennium in style. With new data types, user-defined functions, Internet support, and many more new features, this version of SQL Server is poised to take the market by storm. SQL Server 2000 Black Book will help you make the most of this exciting new version of SQL Server, as well as provide you with many tips and techniques that can be applied to legacy systems back to at least SQL Server 6.5 and forward into future versions of SQL Server for years to come. This book provides help and guidance for building and configuring your SQL Server and designing rock-solid maintenance plans. Then it moves on to database design, development, and performance tuning topics that will help you make the most of this remarkable database platform. Is This Book for You? SQL Server 2000 Black Book was written with the intermediate or advanced user in mind. One of the points emphasized in this book is that you can solve any technical problem you are faced with using the tools available to you. What are those tools? How do you research answers to questions? How do you know if you can trust the sources you consult? How do particular features really work, and will they work for you? We cover all of these questions and many more in the pages of this book. We hope that you enjoy reading it and learn as much from it as we did writing it. This book is geared toward two basic groups of readers. The first group is the database administrators with an intermediate to advanced level of SQL Server knowledge and experience. The second group is SQL developers, also with an intermediate to advanced level of SQL Server knowledge and experience. The Tools chapter (Chapter 5), and the SQL chapter (Chapter 9) in particular are provided to ensure that readers have a solid grounding in these two areas, because this information is key to understanding the material presented in later chapters. Some beginners may find these chapters useful as well. You should possess a good working knowledge of SQL Server and Transact-SQL programming. This book also assumes a basic understanding of Windows NT and windows programs and utilities in general. Among the topics that are covered are: Hardware choices for server planning Server maintenance routines every database administrator should know New features available in SQL Server 2000 Advanced SQL programming techniques Advanced data manipulation routines Database design guidelines for enterprise-level databases This book is written as an extension to the Microsoft SQL Server Black Book published by The Coriolis Group in 1997. While the first book focused mainly on installing and configuring SQL Server, this book delves deeply into what is required to take full advantage of the capabilities and features of SQL Server 2000. This book has a great deal more information about building good relational databases and using the Transact-SQL programming language to build robust applications. We have tried to keep the language in this book as clear and matter-of-fact as possible. We have supplied you with a substantial technical background, while also supplying numerous hands-on examples to help you quickly become familiar with various topics. This book can be used as a tutorial or as a desktop reference to help you get the most from SQL Server 2000. With this book in hand, you will have no problem creating and maintaining enterprise-level solutions with SQL Server 2000 at their core. How to Use This Book Each chapter in this book is broken into two sections. The first part of each chapter presents explanatory material about the topics covered in the chapter. The second part of the chapter (the Immediate Solutions) supplies you with some step-by-step examples that reinforce and expand on the information provided in the first part of the chapter as well as providing hands-on practice with the concepts being presented. Chapters 1 through 8 cover installation, configuration, tools and utilities, and setting up the sample databases used throughout the remainder of the book. After completing this section of the book, you should have a working SQL Server 2000 server with a solid maintenance plan in place and the sample databases installed and be ready to work through the examples in the remainder of the book. The Black Book Philosophy Written by experienced professionals, Coriolis Black Books provide immediate solutions to global programming and administrative challenges, helping you complete specific tasks, especially critical ones that are not well documented in other books. The Black Book's unique two-part chapter format-thorough technical overviews followed by practical immediate solutions-is structured to help you use your knowledge, solve problems, and quickly master complex technical issues to become an expert. By breaking down complex topics into easily manageable components, this format helps you quickly find what you're looking for, with the diagrams and code you need to make it happen. Writing this book has been both difficult and rewarding. It is always interesting to work with a beta version of a product this complex, but writing a book using a product beta can be especially challenging. When the final release version of the product was reviewed, we made very effort to make sure we were up-to-date and that nothing had changed. If you find something that is perhaps a bit different than the actual product, we apologize. We welcome your feedback on this book. You can either email The Coriolis Group at [email protected], or you can reach the authors on the Internet through email. Patrick can be reached at [email protected], and Paul can be reached at [email protected]. Please do not hesitate to send us feedback-whether positive or negative-concerning this book. Errata, updates, and more are available at www.coriolis.com.