Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Database Development From Scratch

Lots of tutorial books use examples, and some build on them in successive chapters as new concepts are introduced. Rob Hawthorne takes that approach to great effect in Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Database Development from Scratch. He documents all the SQL Server 2000 features an administrator would need to know about, and does a pretty complete job of describing features that are of primary interest to database and database-application designers.

The book walks you through the development of an application that uses lots of the features SQL Server 2000 supports. The example application, SpyNet, employs a reasonably complex suite of interrelated tables, some stored procedures and triggers for them, and both Windows and Web-based user interfaces. SpyNet also draws on SQL Server 2000's security features (users and privileges), and the database application is used as a platform for demonstrating how to perform various routine and special-purpose administrative procedures. It's an effective approach, well-suited to readers who haven't built SQL Server solutions before. The book deals with design issues more fully than most environment-centric books, but you might want to supplement it with Database Design if you anticipate setting up a complicated arrangement of tables. That book is platform-independent. --David Wall

Topics covered:

• Introduction to Microsoft SQL Server 2000
• Schema design
• Data normalization
• Queries in Transact-SQL
• Data Definition Language (DDL)
• Data Transformation Services (DTS)
• Security, backup, and disaster recovery