Preface

I’ve been working with Microsoft SQL Server for a very long time—it was, in fact, one of the first Microsoft server products I was responsible for in a production environment. I do so much with Windows PowerShell these days that not many folks know I have a strong fondness for good ol’ SQL Server.

Learn SQL Server Administration in a Month of Lunches exists in large part because I’ve met so many administrators who came to SQL Server the same way I did: “Hey, you know Microsoft stuff, why don’t you have a look at our database server and see why it’s running so slowly?” The “Reluctant DBAs,” as I call us, aren’t typically involved in database development. We might not have access to the code that’s connecting to SQL Server; in many cases we simply need to know how to run a reliable backup, keep indexes maintained, and keep the server running as smoothly as possible. That’s what this book will try to teach you.

This book won’t try to make you an expert DBA, and I doubt this book will be the last one you read on SQL Server. But this book is a good first book to read on SQL Server: it’ll help you understand the less-than-obvious things going on under the hood, and hopefully give you a solid foundation for working more effectively with SQL Server.

Good luck!