ISBN0735623775

My personal opinion this book should have been that last in series ...it has some repeated information i.e High Availabilty, High Protection architectures.. Ch8 : Failover Clustering being introduced first time in this book should have been give more pages and info. Some body who has done all practise in First book ( implementation and maintenance ..) don't need know or redo Mirroring, replication etc. Anyway the book has some important aspect in the first seven chapters which cannot be missed and being a simple DBA is not enough ..one need to know how the infrastructre go about...

I passed 70-431 and turned right around to study for the next test. I used the Microsoft Press book for the last one and went with Microsoft on this test. I passed 70-443 on the first try, but read this book all the way through first. I did some of the hands-on examples, but I have a lot of experience with SQL Server 2005. I thought the book could have expanded more on Clustering and Partitioning. I found errors in the Chapter tests and other areas, so watch out. A lot of information was covered in 70-431 that is in this book. Don't get hung up on the repeat of information because you are taking all this information and taking a test over "Case Studies". The test will show you a company situation and then you must solve a problem. It is not just a "fact test" -- like "What is the Workgroup edition memory limit?" or something like that. There are a few chapters that I will reference, so this book will stay on my shelf.

I purchased this book after taking and passing the 70-620 Exam, figuring that another Microsoft Training Kit book would be of great value for my 70-622 exam. Nothing could be further from the truth; the book has a few instances of good and solid information but overall lacks substance, contains missing or inaccurate information on important topics and more importantly: spell check. I gave up verifying information contained within after the first 5 chapters.

I did pass the 70-622 exam but not because of the book, less than 30% of the questions from the exam could be found in this training kit. I recommend finding a different training guide for your certification endeavors or purchasing for the 15% off test voucher.

This kit does a fantastic job of explaining all components of SQL Server 2005. The practice tests and questions are easy to use and very helpful. While the explanations may not go into in-depth detail, the present a good overview. i recommend this kit. a great value for the money.

This book prepares you verry well for the exam. Its not a big book but its very concice and lets you practice most of the topics you read. The requirements to study for this book are to have a few virtual machines to setup up a local network with a server which has some server roles and few clients. Thats cool because in that way you practice like in the enterprise enviroment. The exercises are very well explained with just a few typos so far. I recomend to create vista virtual machines without sp1 cuz it uninstall the gpmc.msc console that you need to make some exercises. Overall its a very nice book to study, grab it.