Reviews for MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-432): Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Implementation And Maintenance Book/CD Package (PRO-Certification)

1. Read the book, learn from the practice exams

   Rated 2 out of 5 stars, January 12th, 2010

   I won't go into detail on the bad points of the book (the technical and many grammatical errors, lesson review questions that require knowledge of the next few lessons, the author's arrogance, etc.) as these have all been mentioned by other reviewers. I do however have praise for the practice exams - they are the saving grace.
   
   When you do the practice tests on the accompanying CD they're really configurable and you can get detailed explanations of every answer. What was disappointing was what each explanation includes references to which chapters/lessons in the book the answer is covered in and in a lot of cases the book simply doesn't cover the subject at a level low enough to answer the question. Don't let this stop you though, the explanations within the software are well worth studying.
   
   In the end I was not left confident at all but I did pass the exam and I believe this was only from the hours spent on the practice tests.
   
   My top tip: Once you've read the book concentrate on database backup/restore procedures. Follow that by going over failover clustering, mirroring, replication and log shipping and research online if you're not already familiar with them.

2. Link to corrections for this book

   Rated 3 out of 5 stars, November 12rd, 2009

   
   
   I like the new layout of the book compared to the Windows 2008 series which were compiled earlier. Microsoft have released a web page with corrections listed, in fact they seem to do this for other learning books, so rather than change the book which is a shame or tell you where to look for updates which is also inconvenient. Anyway hope it helps in this case.
   
   http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/968609

3. What a terrible document!

   Rated 1 out of 5 stars, September 12rd, 2009

   As mentioned in other reviews, the factual errors in the first chapter alone should be a massive warning to people who want to use this book as a learning reference.
   
   The publisher should really be ashamed of this effort.

4. A good training aid

   Rated 3 out of 5 stars, July 12th, 2009

   The book comes with 150 questions on disk and a 6 month licence of SQL 2008 Enterprise. Some sections of the book, test you on parts of the book you havnt actually read about and other sections are actually wrong. Rather than see this as a problem it made me use the book in parallel with MSDN. I wouldn't use the book for work, but as a training/revision aid its fine.

5. Fundamental errors

   Rated 1 out of 5 stars, June 12th, 2009

   As the previous reviewer notes, there are basic errors in the number of instances reported, there are typos in the value ranges of the datatypes, the review questions refer to material not covered in the chapter, and to cap it all off one of the practise test questions says that the information for the question is covered in Chapter 2 lessons 2, 3 & 4... there are only 3 lessons in Chapter 2.
   
   If the author spent as long on the details as he does on the little bits at the beginning of each chapter where he regales you with another amazing thing from his illustrious career then this could be a good book. However he seems more interested in getting across how many servers/databases/companies he's worked for, and making sure you know what a genius he is.
   
   If you're looking for a book to get you through the exam, then try a different one. Personally after 20 years as a SQL Server DBA, I'm amazed Microsoft have put their name to this book, let alone used it for a training kit.