Book Review - Tribal SQL

How many of you have written a book? Probably not many. Yet how people working with SQL Server have thought that they knew better, or that someone else would really appreciate how you do something? Probably a lot more.

Trying to encourage new authors to share a small, manageable amount of knowledge on a subject, like the lightening talk of the book world, is one of the aims of the book I'm looking at in this post - Tribal SQL.

It came about from a wish of Jen and Sean McCown (The Midnight DBAs) to let people read the insight and enthusiasm which is present in the less often heard corners of the SQL Community. I think they've done a good job in encouraging new voices.

The subjects covered are as varied as the topics - and all are in an informal, insightful manor, which encourages this both as an introduction to areas into which you might not have previously strayed, and also as a reference material / revision of best practice for those who have.

I'd strongly recommend this book to Accidental DBAs, who may find themselves suddenly confronted with a lot of new requirements and challenges, not the least of which is a distinct lack of training budget! (I'd also encourage attendance at SQL Community events, like SQL Saturday Exeter which is being held in March in the South West of England, and is free to attend).

This book doesn't restrict itself to the technical subjects (although it certainly does cover them, for example in Storage Internals and Data Compression) but also covers softer skills, such as project management skills, and how to get a stellar performance review. There's more basic introductory topics too, such as Stephanie Locke's chapter on reports, and how to gather requirements, implement a good relationship with others in the organisation, and produce them a great report.

I found the breadth really refreshing - the authors clearly want you to learn, and the fact that they've donated their royalties to charity really underlines their wish to help those around them.

If you aren't convinced, Red Gate have currently got a sample chapter on their website (UPDATE: as Melanie pointed out in the comments below, there are three sample chapters from the book on the Simple Talk website - Agile Database Development, Guerrilla Project Management for DBAs and SQL Server Storage Internals 101), and you can buy the book from Amazon - there's even an e-book available! The code samples are all available from the Tribal SQL website.


Disclosure: I was sent a review copy of this book free of charge by Red Gate Publishing, but otherwise received no remuneration or reward for this review.

Book Review - SQL Server Transaction Log Management

I was recently sent a review copy of "SQL Server Transaction Log Management" by Tony Davis and Gail Shaw, a new book from Red Gate (who publish the SimpleTalk series of websites and books.


This book is part of the Stairway series of books, and as such tackles a narrow subject, but from the very basics to an expert level. I found that the process of building from simple basics to a more in depth discussion of the technical details was accessible both to those who might have inherited a system and need to know how to properly configure it to minimise risk, and those who have a more detailed understanding.

Whilst this book does tackle data recovery, it is more about prevention and putting yourself in the position of avoiding the disaster in the first place. The process used in this book allows you to take a look at the reasons why you would choose to manage your transaction log in various ways, what implications this might have, and how that might impact upon your service level agreements (time and amount of potential data loss in a disaster) to the business. It deals with why and how to back up the transaction log in order to minimise data loss, and the implications of a corruption or loss of a log backup.

The book has detailed chapters on Full and Bulk Logged recovery modes, and even deals with Simple mode, and the ways in which the transaction log is used in each of them. It also goes through common scenarios (run away growth of a transaction log, disaster recovery, switching modes) to examine the implications and ways forward for each. It also looks at how to optimise your log so that you get the best performance for your intended use of the system, and how to monitor the log to check it is working optimally.

The style of the book is very much that of a taught example, and as such it allows the reasons why a course of action is desirable (or not) to be reinforced with a worked example, and specifies where decisions have been taken that aren't ideal for a production environment.

This is the sort of book I would give to a Junior DBA, to familiarise him or her with why transaction logs are configured as they are, and will keep for my own shelf to remind myself of the more technical details as to what is going on inside SQL Server in various log operations.