"I come from a T-SQL background, so when I first laid my eyes on SQL Server 2005, I was shocked--and then, I was scared! I didn't have a CLR or XML background and suddenly had an urgent need to learn it. SQL Server 2005 is too big of a release to learn from the books online. Fortunately, now there is a book for developers who need to go from SQL Server 2000 to SQL Server 2005 and to do it as painlessly as possible. Basically, it's one-stop shopping for serious developers who have to get up to speed quickly. I'll keep this one on my desk--not on my bookshelf. Well done, Bob and Dan!" --Dr. Tom Moreau SQL Server MVP and Monthly Columnist SQL Server Professional, Brockman Moreau Consulting Inc. "A SQL book truly for developers, from two AUTHORities on the subject. I'll be turning to this book first when I need to understand a component of SQL Server 2005." --Matt Milner Instructor Pluralsight "An excellent book for those of us who need to get up to speed on what's new in SQL Server 2005. The AUTHORs made sure this book includes the final information for the release version of the product. Most other books out now are based on beta versions. It covers key areas from XML and SQLCLR to Notification Services. Although the wide variety of information is great, my favorite part was the advice given on when to use what, and how performance is affected." --Laura Blood Senior Software Developer Blue Note Computing, Inc. "SQL Server 2005 is a massive release with a large number of new features. Many of these features were designed to make SQL Server a great application development platform. This book provides comprehensive information about the SQL Server features of most interest to application developers. The lucid text and wealth of examples will give a developer a clear understanding of how to use SQL Server 2005 to a whole new class of database applications. It should be on every SQL Server developer's bookshelf." --Roger Wolter Solutions Architect Microsoft Corporation "While there will be a lot of good books on SQL Server 2005 development, when people refer to the 'bible,' they'll be talking about this book." --Dr. Greg Low Senior Consultant Readify Pty Ltd "SQL Server 2005 is loaded with new features and getting a good overview is essential to understand how you can benefit from SQL Server 2005's features as a developer. Bob and Dan's book goes beyond enumerating the new SQL Server 2005 features, and will provide you with lots of good examples. They did a good job striking a balance between overview and substance." --Michiel Wories Senior Program Manager, SQL Server Microsoft Corporation Few technologies have been as eagerly anticipated as Microsoft SQL Server 2005. Now, two SQL Server insiders deliver the definitive hands-on guide--accurate, comprehensive, and packed with examples. A Developer's Guide to SQL Server 2005 starts where Microsoft's documentation, white papers, and Web articles leave off, showing developers how to take full advantage of SQL Server 2005's key innovations. It draws on exceptional cooperation from Microsoft's SQL Server developers and the AUTHORs' extensive access to SQL Server 2005 since its earliest alpha releases. You'll find practical explanations of the new SQL Server 2005 data model, built-in .NET hosting, improved programmability, SQL:1999 compliance, and much more. Virtually every key concept is illuminated via sample code that has been fully updated for and tested with the shipping version of the product. Key covera

Bob Beauchemin is a database-centric application practitioner and architect, DBA

Bob Beauchemin Wow. I can't believe it's been almost two years since I was writing the preface for our first book,A First Look at SQL Server 2005 for Developers. Those two years, and the two years before, have been a whirlwind of working with the SQL Server product, including teaching, consulting, writing, and conferences. I still haven't stopped to catch my breath. SQL Server 2005 was officially launched in September 2005. And we've been working on enhancements to theFirst Lookbook since it was published in mid-2004. As with any book on a beta version of a product, the product itself changed after the book was published. In fact, one of the first changes was a feature cut that came two weeks after the book shipped. Keeping up has been a high-energy endeavor, because since beta 2, there were an order of magnitude more additions and enhancements than cuts. This book is the product of the great response we got to theFirst Lookbook and the answer to the frequently asked question, "When are you guys going to do an update?" I'd say that this is quite a bit more than an update, however. We've included lots of new and revised material; there are too many changes to enumerate. There is even a section on best practices because at this point in time, the early adopters who shipped revised versions of their software that works with SQL Server 2005 have already had a few years to practice. We did, however, wait for the "golden bits" to appear before embarking on the last of the series of revisions. This turned out to be a good move, as the implementation details of a few of the features changed slightly up until the last candidate release. This is a Sisyphus-like strategy for the most part, however, as the software keeps improving. As I write this, Service Pack 1 has been announced and may indeed change things slightly. Work has begun on the next release of SQL Server, code-named Katamai, and the next version of the .NET Framework is currently available in beta. Software products are never static. Dan and I will be including the code samples from the book and updates on our Web sites: http://www.SQLskills.com (Books section) http://www.pluralsight.com We'll also be writing about SQL Server 2005 features and enhancements in our blogs. The ANSI SQL 2003 specification "shipped," too, and included a slightly different version of Part 14: XML Related Specifications (SQL/XML). The W3C XQuery committee is closing in on becoming a recommendation. As an additional point of note, since theFirst Lookbook was published, both of Microsoft's biggest competitors in the database space have released .NET Framework procedure inclusion (although integration is not as tight) and have announced or released XQuery support. By now, you probably have heard about the .NET Framework-based procedures, the inclusion of the XML data type and XQuery language, the enhancements to T-SQL to support robust error handling and queries against hierarchical data and open-schema based designs, and versioningbased transaction isolation. These features, however, combined with inclusion of an asynchronous messaging system, SQL Server Service Broker, permit SQL Server to move toward a Service Oriented Database Architecture. Event Notifications, Query Notifications, and database mail are the first manifestations of this type of architecture; it moves SQL Server toward being more of a system that responds asynchronously to external events, rather than being strictly connection-and-statement-based. Service Broker, combined with CLR procedural code and XML data support, enables database programmers to build their own service-based applications. The inclusion of support for Web Services as an alternate client stack is another manifestation of this architecture. This is such a compelling programming model that Mi