Customer Rating:  
Summary: Study Guide Only!!!!
Comment: After reading this book, I felt it was lacking in details and possibly had more than a few errors. Although it is a study guide, with some good challenging practice questions, I can not help but emphasize for a few dollars more you could get a better study guide that would be far more useful and prepare you better.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Average Study Guide
Comment: I would recommend using this book in conjunction with Microsoft 70-431 preparation guide and Measure UP's or Self Test Software's preperation and practice tests. Its hard to pass SQL 2005 depending only on this book (unless you have some experience working with SQL 2005). Good for quick final review before exam too.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Aimed to be a 5 stars. Got 4.
Comment: I've been using ExamCram since Windows NT 4. :) Not all of them are impressive. This one is the same.
This is a good last book for quickly reviewing the key concepts to pass the exam. If the topics, such as Service Broker, XML, etc, are new to you and you have read the topic else where, you will appreciate how much the author has condense everything to the basic. It reminds me of the "cheat sheet" at work someone showed me.
Don't get me wrong this is NOT the only book to use to prepare the exam. When I say quickly reviewing, it took me under 30 minutes to finish chapter one because it is easy for me. But, it was snail pace for me on couple new features from sql 2005. To average readers, I think 1 solid day will be the bare minimum to review using this book. I wish author can share more mnemonic to help sponge up all these new stuffs. :)
ON the plus side, ch7, subtitle: "Activity Monitor For Here and Now". really speak out what Activity Monitor does!
On the neg side, I don't like the style of writing. To me, tech book written in present tense with action words is preferred. Also, it was "wordy". May be it is just me.
now for the technical correctness, the following are things that aren't entirely correct.
ch4, question 2, nodes() and value() can both be the answer.
ch5, Creating a Queue, ALTER QUEUE example used CREATE.
ch6, While describing FORMAT option and how it works, it ends with "The default behavior is NOFORMAT, and the media header is not written." So, a FORMAT option has default behavior of NOFORMAT? This is not clear.
ch 10, q 2, IN is a possible answer when used with NESTED query.
q3, the choice (a) should have said CLR User-Defined Type, which is different than the plain-o UDT.
ch 10, q20, can two jobs with different schedules need be scheduled with one schedule?
Mirror is on the exam and detailed steps was asked.
The prospects.xls mentioned in the book is missing. where to download it? where is the errata?
The exam has simulation which requires much hands on experience. One will easily fail if this is the only study material.
Overall is a good book, it is destined to be a 5 stars. It is hammered down by a few , yet, important errors. 4 stars.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Concise exam preparation...only...
Comment: As mentioned in previous reviews, this book is purely an exam preparation guide. If you are planning on sitting the 70-431 exam, this book is a worthwhile resource. It ignores irrelevant (non-exam) material and contains a few sample test questions extremely similar to ones found in the actual exam (which is what you're after).
If you are planning on becoming a proficient SQL Server DBA, you will need to look elsewhere. However, for what it is intended to achieve, I give it 4 stars!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good Starting Point
Comment: This book was a good starting point, but I wouldn't suggest taking the exam after only studying it. I don't know what exam the author took, but there was a lot of stuff on mine that wasn't even alluded to in this book.
I've been a SQL Server programmer/admin for 10 years, so I went into this thinking my knowledge would just need a little brushing up. Breezed through the book and the sample tests and thought "This is going to be easy!" Wrong!
Given the MS 70-413 test is like all the other MS cert tests in that it is as much about getting past the trick questions as knowing anything practical, this book's example questions are waaaay too easy. The subject matter is extremely light weight, too.
Didn't try Transcender, but had coupons for MeasureUp and SelfTest preps. If I had it to do over, I'd devote most of my time to the SelfTest product. Its level of trick questions and general difficulty made it the best for this test. Unfortunately, I discovered this later than I should have.
I passed the test, but it wasn't pretty.
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