I know you probably think I've fallen off the planet, but I've just been busy; preparing to teach a class, trying to keep multiple clients happy, and trying to learn SQL Server 2005. (I've also got to pay attention to my family sometime, don't I?) Anyway, the SQL Server 2005 Beta is publicly available now, and there is a lot of new stuff to learn.
Jon Box let me borrow a book that someone gave him (I would like to mention him, but I forgot his name. Maybe Jon can remind me.) The book, entitled A First Look at SQL Server 2005 for Developers, is published by Addison Wesley. It's authors are Bob Beauchemin, Niels Berglund, and Dan Sullivan. If you are a fan of SQL Server, you need this book! SQL Server 2005 has quite a few changes in store for us, and you WILL need help learning to take advantage of all of them. Here is a short list:
- Inclusion of the .NET 2.0 Framework (You can write stored procs, functions, and triggers in any .NET language.)
- T-SQL enhancements (That dang TOP X statement will FINALLY accept a variable, Stored procs now have support for recursion, and more.)
- User-defined Aggregates
- Enhanced Security
- Statement-level Recompilation (!!)
- Triggers on DDL statements (You can fire a trigger when someone drops a table from your database!)
- XPath 2.0 (If you want me to babble on forever, just ask me about XML and XPath.)
- XQuery 1.0 (A whole new way to query XML data.)
- XML as a data type (Whoo hoo! XML is no longer a large string of text. It can be queried directly.)
- Other new data types (You can now use .NET UDFs; even rich Object Hierarchies.)
- Web Service Hosting
- Notification Services
- Service Broker (Message Queues)
That's enough for now. While by no means exhaustive, this list gives you the idea. SQL Server 2005 is not a mere upgrade; it is a greatly enhanced product. (Did I forget to mention the expected performance improvements?)
Which brings me back to my point (yes, I had one): If you are looking for a great book to help you learn these new features, well, remember this post's title.