Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Administration with Windows PowerShell

✍ Scribed by Ananthakumar Muthusamy, Yan Pan

• Publisher: Wrox
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 580
• Series: Wrox Programmer to Programmer
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Great content, poor marketing and very poor title!

Very good outline of how powershell works, may I suggest that WROX remove the 50 pages of SQL content and re-label the book as a great beginning tutorial to learning Powershell.
This book is very weak on the how to setup a competent SQL connection to and use it to manipulate SQL server like a DBA would like to do.

This is not a problem with the authorship, they are just doing what they have access to as far as tools from Microsoft. Currently Microsoft only provides a Mini-shell connection, and a modified SQLCMD connection that negates any benefits that powershell brings to working with SQL Server.

This book uses the tools that are available to them from Microsoft which is limited to a mini-shell and SQLCMD.exe type connection to SQL server. These types of connections work well in straight scripting but are very cumbersome, verbose and chatty, when it comes down to writing powershell routines. As such there is not much the authors can do to help the DBA automate SQL task functions in this environment. Given this limited connectivity there is not much you can't accomplish by directly working in SQLCMD.exe, which also limits the desirability of this book to SQL Server professionals.

What most DBA's are looking for is a powershell IDE environment that has direct access to all SMO assembles, where there are commands to call manipulate all the fine details of SQL Server are found.
Currently this book doesn't cover access to all the SMO assemblies because the Microsoft branded tools to do so don't exist. There are free third party snapins that could have been written about to fix this problem but they are not mentioned in this book.

I think Wrox knew about a market for a book and tried to address that need and clearly missed what the customers who were going to buy the book wanted from it.

This book is printed on newsprint quality paper (the pages are tan not bright white) yet this book still costs $60.00 retail very unprofessional and hard to read unless you're in perfect lighting conditions.