If you have been to any of the SQLBits events many of you will have no doubt made a conscious effort to go to the sessions by Ramesh Meyyappan. Ramesh is absolutely awesome at performance tuning, you can see some of his previous presentations at the SQLBits site here, but did you know that he has also posted some fantastic free webcasts at http://www.sqlworkshops.com/webcast?
I watched most of these a few months ago and wow, this is some serious stuff. I really fancied attending one of the courses as it truly is a level 400 course, take a look at the recommended reading list:
My Book recommendation for developers:
I recommend reading Microsoft SQL Server 2008 series from Itzik Ben-Gan. He has contributed greatly to the SQL Server
community by writing these technical books.· Microsoft SQL Server 2008 T-SQL Fundamentals from Microsoft Press
· Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2008: T-SQL Querying from Microsoft Press
· Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2008: T-SQL Programming from Microsoft Press
Try to read the SQL Server 2008 books, even if you are not using SQL Server 2008 yet for 2 reasons, SQL Server 2005
features are a subset SQL Server 2008, eventually you will use SQL Server 2008.· Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2005: T-SQL Querying from Microsoft Press
· Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2005: T-SQL Programming from Microsoft Press
My book recommendation for administrators and developers:
I recommend developers to read above T-SQL books before they venture in to the below books. As a developer you have
some responsibility to understand SQL Server architecture.· Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Internals from Microsoft Press
· SQL Server 2005 Practical Troubleshooting: The Database Engine by Ken Henderson
· Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2005: Query Tuning and Optimization from Microsoft Press
· Inside Microsoft SQL Server(TM) 2005: The Storage Engine from Microsoft Press
· The Guru’s Guide to SQL Server Architecture and Internals by Ken Henderson
I have not read recent books, so I have no suggestion on them, may be you can share some of your opinions. I remember
reading the ‘The Guru’s Guide to SQL Server Architecture and Internals by Ken Henderson’ long long time ago, read
chapter 10 again, I don’t remember the rest of the book much anymore, but chapter 10 is a must read.Like I mentioned all books, like software having bugs, have mistakes, larger, smaller, cosmetic, technical, try to practice
what you learn so you don’t learn something wrong. Keep away from undocumented stuff.Read this blog from top to bottom, read twice if necessary: http://blogs.msdn.com/craigfr, Craig Freedman blog is a
chapter in ‘Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2005: Query Tuning and Optimization’, but I like the blog better, not just because
it is free, it is alive, well was not for nearly 6 months, but is back. You know what I think, you need to keep sending Craig
questions and comments, If not the number of blog entries will decrease over time.