MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-432): Microsoft SQL Server 2008-Implementation and Maintenance: Microsoft SQL Server 2008--Implementation and Maintenance (PRO-Certification) |  | Author: Mike Hotek
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Category: Book
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Rating:  27 reviews
Sales Rank: 11263
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Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 672
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3.4
Dimensions (in): 9.6 x 7.7 x 2
MPN: 9780735626058
ISBN: 0735626057
Dewey Decimal Number: 004
EAN: 9780735626058
ASIN: 0735626057
Publication Date: February 18, 2009
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Product Description
EXAM PREP GUIDE Ace your preparation for the skills measured by MCTS Exam 70-432—and on the job. Work at your own pace through a series of lessons and reviews that fully cover each exam objective. Then, reinforce and apply what you’ve learned through real-world case scenarios and practice exercises. This official Microsoft study guide is designed to help you make the most of your study time. Maximize your performance on the exam by learning to: - Configure, manage, back up, and restore databases
- Create a partitioned table, index, or indexed view
- Configure services and components to manage your environment
- Help prevent unauthorized access at each security infrastructure layer
- Design and deploy high-availability solutions
- Manage SQL Server Agent jobs, alerts, and operators
- Identify service, concurrency, and job execution problems
PRACTICE TESTS Assess your skills with the practice tests on CD. You can work through hundreds of questions using multiple testing modes to meet your specific learning needs. You get detailed explanations for right and wrong answers—including a customized learning path that describes how and where to focus your studies. Your kit includes: - 15% exam discount from Microsoft. Offer expires 12/31/13. Details inside.
- Official self-paced study guide.
- Practice tests with multiple, customizable testing options and a learning plan based on your results.
- 250+ practice and review questions.
- Case scenarios, exercises, and best practices.
- Sample chapters from related Microsoft Press® books.
- 180-day trial of SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition.
- Fully searchable eBook of this guide.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 27
 It is a good book BUT... August 17, 2010
William S. Melton (Montgomery, AL)
The important thing to note of this book is ensure you check the errata page on O'Reilly's product page for this book.
I believe the low points of the book have been hit by most of the other reviewers of the book. This is the point I want to make: when did this book get published? Copyright page shows 2009. What year is it? 2010, I think it is time for a new revision of this book to come out, especialy since a service pack has already been released and SQL Server 2008 R2 has come out. Although I don't know that the exam is being updated yet for all this.
I have taken the 70-432 exam (and passed). I took the exam prior to completely reading this book, which that is mostly due to expiration of a voucher coupon. However I do believe this book will help you in preparing for the exam. As many other people state and in general for taking Microsoft exams this should not be your only source. I have worked with SQL Server since 2004 (year not version:). I started playing with SQL Server 2008 not long after it came out. If you are familar and work frequently with SQL Server 2005 this book is useful for getting you aquainted with the new features of 2008 and the changes made on how it handles some things.
The content of the book covers pretty much every detail of SQL Server that you would encounter, even if you have not worked with SQL Server 2005. So it can be a good reference book to refresh up on a particular area of SQL Server 2008. The practice exam is invaluable if you have not taken Microsoft tests before. They actually do help you find the weak areas you have with SQL Server. I believe this content mixed with SQL Server Books Online could be used to prepare for the exam if you have access to an installation of SQL Server 2008.
Overall if you want to learn SQL Server 2008 and study for the exam this book is an option. Although you need to pay attention to the errata page on O'Reilly for the information in the book that is not correct. That link is found here: [...]
The Book is only as good as the reader August 10, 2010
Bradley T. Ball (Newport News, VA 23606)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I want to start out by identifying myself. I'm a SQL DBA I've got around 8 years of experience, I've got my MCITP for SQL 2005 for Database Administration. So I've read the 70-431 book cover to cover and I can understand some of the criticism of this book, but will address that later.
I bought this book to train for the 70-431 test, I didn't upgrade my cert but choose to take 70-431 & 70-450. Now I studied the book like crazy, I made flash cards, I used the CD in the back of the book, but I did not rely on it. Anything that I felt was not flushed out as well as I liked I would study on MSDN, or great blogs like Paul Randal's. I read several white papers, and was able to use a lot of the knowledge in the work place, which re-enforced my studies..... And I passed the Cert test. Mike's knowledge of SQL Server is great, but there are a lot of sections where Deep Dives will reveal more detail and may even contradict what is written. But bottom line if you study the book, the concepts, and the practices, and know them inside and out then this book is enough to prep you for the exam.
If you want to be a SQL Rockstar, (Google Brent Ozar and SQL Rockstar and read his article), then this is a beginning and you have a lot more work to do. But that goes with a lot of things in life, if all you are willing to do is crack open this book, study it's questions, and do nothing more to prepare for this exam then you are missing a lot of SQL Server Knowledge and while you *might* pass the test you will be a so/so DBA, then that is your choice.
But Dear Reader it is up to you to get that knowledge and Mike does a great job of providing you a diving board to spring from. The question remains, how far do you want to go as a SQL DBA and how hard are you willing to chase it? A book is a book. The reader determines what is achieved with the knowledge they derive from the book.
IN COMPARISON TO 70-431
There is a review that states that this book is far inferior to the 70-431 book. And I would agree.
I would, however, like to point out that Microsoft has tried to specify the SCOPE of DBA training. Whereas 70-431 had to address DBA, Database Developer, and BI (until BI was later split out on it's own path), 70-432 only covers DBA items, and the scope of the exam is also narrowed.
So is 70-431 a better more inclusive book? Yes, but it should be.
It is like saying the Star Wars Trilogy is a more complete story than just Empire Strikes Back.
Yes it should be it is 3 movies not 1.
And yes 70-431 should be, it was meant to cover 3 subjects not 1 (even thoug it was weak on BI which is why they split it out).
This is a very Good book, and I recommend it to anyone who is studying to take the 70-432 exam.
Let's see, (pull's out check list)
Fan boy mentions of Paul Randal and Brent Ozar.....Check
Find a way to bring Star Wars into the conversation....Check
well I think that covers it I hope this review helps you decide if you will buy the book or not.
 Great format and poor authorship July 23, 2010
Gene Golub (Brooklyn, NY USA)
I recommend this book because of it's format and still valuable content.
However...
Honorable author Mr.Hotek
If I had to mention every technical mistake and every 'fisherman' story you have in this book, I would be able to write another book about your book.
If you stop telling your endless stories about you saving your 'mythical' clients who run 1000's of databases, tech. proofing book text and stop 'watering' needed context with questionable advises, this book would easily get 5 stars because it's format deserves 50 stars.
Here are few examples.
1. page 597 where you write about yourself:
An application
developer for about three decades and a Microsoft SQL Server professional for almost two decades, he has
consulted on over 1,000 SQL Server projects
He is proficient in over 40 development languages or platforms.
Note 40 LANGUAGES and 1 consulting project every 5 days over 20 yr - simply impossible to believe.
Don't call me root, but I doubt anybody can pass an interview claiming he is proficient with 10 or even 7 languages, not 40.
pg. 592, last line: 'Alter Login' is used to re-map logins and db users - this is the wrong answer because 'alter login' does not remap logins and users. There is no right answer in the set you provide. Right answer would be 'sp_change_users_login'
pg. 597, Answer on question 'Which raid provide best combination of performance and fault tolerance'.
According to Mr. Hotek, raid 5 provides less fault tolerance then raid 10. This is wrong because raid 10 provides better performance on write and slightly lesser performance on read and equal tolerance.
So depending on application of that resource your answer could be either completely wrong of only 50%.
However I would like to ask Mr. Hotek question if he knows how to measure disk performance of raid 10, 5 or any other? Because it's simple but he does not mention it in a book which I think would be very practical.
Implementation of raids is different from company to company, from architecture (SAN vs. DAS) and I happened to be testing all of it.
pg. 490:
Best Practices
SSMS provides a single interface for configuring all the components of log shipping.
Although the interface can perform all the configuration, most database administrators
(DBAs) prefer to use Transact-SQL to set up log shipping.
That's another example of highly subjective and I think wrong view presented.
While I am coding about 30yr and 20 yr with tsql and consider myself very 'scriptable' person(Korn Shell, vbs, Perl), I can not agree with above statement.
I was coding 'log shipping' on ms sql and Sybase for at least 10yr. However, when it came out as an option in ms sql, I do not even try and haven't seen anybody doing it manually.
... and this list goes on and on.
I actually do not have problem with technical 'wholes' in Mr. Hotek book or his own, I have a problem that his often wrong views are projected to large community.
Too Many Errors, Too Little Time June 4, 2010
John Alfano
I am giving this book two stars only because 1) it's a book about SQL Server 2008 and 2) it DOES cover a variety of topics in regards to SQL Server 2008. Other than that, I think Hotek needs to refrain from writing any other books. There are so many errors in this book that I think I spent more time confirming his information than actually reading the book. Some of the errors were so basic that I'm surprised that a SQL Server administrator wrote the book. Luckily I did find this errata page provided by Microsoft which points out *most* of the errors ([...].). Besides the errors, I was also not impressed with the level of detail on a lot of the information. Again I found myself having to go out to the web and do more research on my own which pretty much defeats the purpose of buying a training kit book. The only real benefit I see in reading this book is to get an overview on what topics you should be studying but be prepared to do a lot of cross referencing and studying using other sources to get the complete picture.
While there is good content, the book is repleat with errors June 3, 2010
Robert A. Kivi (Los Angeles)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I understand the challenge in trying to write a book before the actual software is released to manufacturing, PARTICULARLY with Microsoft; but, there are way too many errors in this book. Dozens and dozens. It gets to the point where it's hard to understand what is accurate and what is not...and I have been dealing with SQL Server since release 6.5. The book is well organized and thoughtfully laid out, but with so much erroneous content (with no published Errata that I know of), it is virtually useless.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 27
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