While I would love to find a great book on advanced backup and recovery techniques for SQL Server 7, this is not the book. This book is far to general and full of fluff to provide the information you really need. It many ways, the book tries to cover a little of everything about being a SQL Server DBA, but it ends up doing a poor job of covering any topic.

I was hoping to find advanced information on log shipping and clustering. While these topics are touched on, they don't provide you the information you really need.

If you need a book on the basics of SQL Server 7 backup, most any book covering basic SQL Server 7 DBA responsibilities should fit the bill. This book is a waste of your time.

Agree with above comments regarding technical details on log shipping and clustering... But this book really gives what I needed for planning db backups at my company. I wish more technical people would take the time to well plan for backups instead of focusing on implementation which you cvan lookup in Books Online.

I found this book to be helpful in planning and designing a trustworthy back-up plan. I'm a DBA who is responsible for backing up 6 database servers and I rely heavily on this book. It provides good examples of how to back-up multiple servers and has advice on how to make it work well. If your just looking for info on the BACKUP and RESTORE commands, just use Books Online. BUt if you want to imlpement a full back-up plan for SQL Server in your environment, this is a great resource. Its easy to read and includes many realistic examples. Highly recommended.

This is one of the worse books I have ever plodded through. I can't believe I actually finished it. It is full of rambling prose, and uninteresting characters, in a very boring, uneventful plot. Why would anyone want to write such a book? What is the point? Matteo and Sophie aren't very deep people, and the bit about the Mother was so uninteresting. It wasn't even worthy of one star and is in such contrast to books by the same author, that have a soul. Why would anyone want to write about this kind of indulgent, boring uninteresting people, even though I know their type exists. They aren't worthy to be characters in any literature.

I did not find this book interesting. I had to struggle to finish it. What distinguishes Anita Desai's work is her vivid and beautiful description of nature. The second half where Sophie goes on a journey to discover the roots of 'Mataji' does not connect well with the readers. A lot of time the book was very boring and going nowhere in the name of spirituality. I read this novel with great anticipation as I liked Desai's 'Clear Light of The Day' very much. If you are expecting something like that then this novel will come as an disppointment.

Desai is a writer who repays re-reading. This book is subtle and textured. The author plays marvelously with time and consciousness in ways reminiscent of Virginia Woolf, brought up to date.

Anita Desai is a very famous author from India. In her story, "Games at Twilight," a peaceful game of hide & seek turns into an unforgettable nightmare for one boy.

I'll start by saying that I did pass the test, so it's apparent that this isn't just sour grapes. But, having passed the test, I can assure you that, for the most part, nothing in this book applied. The labs are fine, but they just take you through one or two canned scenarios per subject, and nothing in the book or the labs actually contributes to your understanding of the subject matter.

I know that the point isn't to be a paper MCSE. You need experience to pass the test. The study guide should be either a starting point that gives you the theory so you can implement it and experience it, or it should be the reference that fills in the gaps in your existing experience. This book is neither.

Sure, this is pretty late for a review of this book. If you are just now buying a book to prepare for this test, you have problems. However, I am still fairly upset with the lack of depth to this book, and I would like Sybex to know about it.

In most cases, what I would consider crucial topics are only covered in the slightest detail. In fairness, the two chapters on TCP/IP and RRAS were fairly decent. There was a good amount of explanation as to WHY to configure things a certain way rather than just HOW.

Plusses: Not very many errors at all. Errors in previous Sybex books were frustrating, so it's nice to see this go.
Minuses: Too many bulleted lists and tables, not enough good meat. Reminds me more of a Test Success book than a Study Guide.

I've completed the MSCE NT4.0 exams using Sybex and did well in all my exams. I've come to expect high standards from Sybex in their study guides but this one doesn't meet them. Don't get me wrong, all of the information needed is covered but it makes to many assumptions as to what you currently know about W2k by not going into depth on many things. I've found my self refering to other books to fill in the blanks.

This book will help you to pass the Accelerated Exam but I don't believe it will do it by itself. You will need to augment your studies with other materials. I'd recommend using Mastering Windows 2000 Server and Mastering Active Directory. Both of these books have been extremely usefull in filling in the blanks.

On a positive note, there are MANY hands on excersises to follow.

Just passed This exam yesterday. I used this guide for study and the Exam Notes to refresh my efforts prior to the exam. This book is recommended for anyone who is current in their NT4 MCSE skill sets. Troubleshooting issues like DNS, permissions, IP, etc. all have their roots in NT4 so the book may not offer indepth troubleshooting sections. Having passed the exam, I can tell for your sure...Your NT4 troubleshooting skills will get you through. What is most important is applying those skills to the new features of Win2K DDNS, RIS, NAT, RRAS, GPO, Active Directory and other new features. They Sybex guide covers them well and the included exercises in the PDF on CD really bring home the points even for those of us who have been working with Win2k from its beta release but haven't yet implemented all of its various features sets yet. Microsoft does not waste your time with trick questions on this exam about obscure corners of the OS not covered in study guides or used in the field as we may have seen in NT4 exam. The Window2000 Accelerated exam will definitely test your attention to detail (clever scenarios but no tricks) however the exam fairly tests your knowledge in areas you should know about to implement Win2K effective and prove your real world experience with this OS. Take nothing for granted, take your NT4 experience, your Win2K hands-on, and THIS Sybex guide and go pass this exam. I highly recommend the companion Exam Notes as it takes all the objectives covered in the Study Guide and neatly organizes them by individual exams: Win2k Pro, Win2k Server, Win2k AD Admin, and Win2K Net Infrastructure Admin. I'm proof the exam can be successfully passed. The exams are not as overwhelming as first thought but they are definitely not a peace a cake. Sybex will get you there.

T

Needing to pass another test to keep my MCSD cert, I tried this book as prep for 70-229. Did the whole thing and examples. From passing other cert tests I knew it was LIGHT on specifics!. Talkes a lot about SQL server and new features in a general way but skirts around necessary details, specifics and examples needed to pass...

Had to buy another book(Que Exam Geer: 70-229 SQL Design/Implement) and then went and past the test...

I recently passed 70-229 exam. I used this book as my preparation guide though I frequently referred to SQL Server Books Online. The book is easy to read and explains the topics well. The review questions at the end of chapters are quite good to test your understanding of the materials. However, expect much tougher scenario based questions in exams. I found the book somewhat lacking in depth in the coverage of replication, the use of query analyzer tools, and transaction and locking issues. So, you may want to turn to Books Online to help you out there...

This book is a great primer for the Exam and SQL Server development in general. While you obviously need to live, eat, and sleep Books On Line to pass the exam, this was a great place to start. I found the chapter on T-SQL to be one of the better ones I've ever read, and I still refer to it often. While no book gives you the test answers (try brain dumps if you want that), I find this a great book.

This book is boring. The book is character driven, but it never gets deep enough into the characters to make them interesting. It's overly wordy and too descriptive to the point that it is excessive and overloaded beyond the point of being able to draw an accurate image of what is being described. I only finished the book because it was pretty short, but even that took me a while because it was so slow and boring.

Set in contemporary India; Nanda Kaul has finished raising her family - children, grandchildren, greatgrandchildren - and seems to want nothing more than to be left alone in her remote hillside home to finish out her days in isolation, peace and quiet. That is until her greatgranddaughter Raka is unexpectedly left with her while the child's mother is ill. Raka is even more remote and independent in nature than Nanda Kaul. The style of writing is poetic; that is, there is no excess of words, and what words are there create vivid images. The story is character-driven, thus proceeding at a slow pace. And it is sad. I would definitely not recommend this book to readers who prefer their stories to wrap up neatly and with happily-ever-after endings.

If you were a research student looking to gain some insight into Indian business culture then you would be as disappointed as I was after reading this book. The back cover of the book suggests "Indian Business Culture addresses the cultural issues related to doing business in India" but the reader is left wondering 'where'? From the tilte of the book you would expect discussion about cultural issues in Indian business however this is not the case. The book is obviously wrongly titled. Its deals with socio-political history of India. The author has carelessly title the book. It also contains some errors such as Nehru's death is claimed to have occured in 1962 whereas he actually died in 1964. There are occasional gramamtical and spelling errors too.This book isnt worth £19.00.

I was disappointed by this book -- I was looking for a book describing cultural assumptions of Indian businesses and how these contrast to the cultural assumptions of Western, especially American businesses. That's not what this book is about at all. This book is a very high level discussion of Indian national economic policy. I think a better title would have been "Indian Business Policy" rather than "Indian Business Culture" since the term 'culture' is inappropriately applied here.

The Backup & Recovery techniques could have been put in less than one third the size of this book. But the book goes needlessly into many of the MS SQL Server 2000 features that have absolutely nothing to do with Backup/Recovery at all. For example, what does Profiler have to do with backup/recovery? Or step by step configuration of SQL Server? If you start at page 305 and stop at page 510, you have read all there is to know about backups and restores. Beyond page 510 are some interesting special purpose topics like Replication and Log shipping etc, which can come in handy for a high availability OLTP systems. However, first four chapters are unnecessary details about NT security and SQL Server 2000 Architecture. Wait for a more focused book.

Most of the contents of this books are fillers. It is obvious the publisher (Osborne) demanded the author to write a 500 page book in order to justify the exorbitant cost of this book.

The real information on backup and recovery does not start until page 331!!!!! The author is a good writer and obviously had lot of IT experience. He does his best to make the book as informative as possible. But it is apparent that backup and recovery information is not worth 500 pages of text.

I think the book could have been salvaged quite well if the last chapter on case studies of backup and recovery scenario was better written, but this is where the author REALLY bombed. His recovery steps can all be summarized as recovering the full, then incremental, then transaction logs. Anyone who knows ANYTHING about SQL recovery knows THAT.

my class had to read it and I will have to say it was somting I would not read another time, not to be rude or anything. None of my class mates liked the book any more than me. SORRY