The `SQL Server 2000 Performance Tuning’ provides the reader with an extensive overview of the functionality that MSS2000 has for performance tuning. This book has been written by the manufacturer of MS2000, and has therefore some specific properties a reader has to taken into account. One of them is that every single tuning-feature is mentioned, although their relative impact (hence importance) on performance is not discussed. Another one is the white-book nature of the information presented; very general advice for the entrylevel DBA. For example: in the chapter `Hi-performance Backup and recovery’ (it has only 18 pages) is says: “plan full backups for off hours”, ” use differential backups”, “use multiple data files” etc.

This book has the title `Technical Reference’ and should be regarded as such. The DBA, working in a company which doesn’t consider performance-tuning important enough to dedicate a policy to, who is confronted with a sudden structural diminishing of performance and is to find out where this bottleneck stems from will not benefit from this book. For example, the book dedicates a mere two pages on “interpreting Graphical Execution Plans” and gives only 1 example. For a useful checklist on where to look first when confronted with the so-called `query from hell’ one should read other books. But for the novice in tuning, the one who is unfamiliar to concepts like locks, RAID, system monitor, I/O,page vs rowlevel, differential backups, how to log in on queryanalyzer, index tuning wizard, etc this book can serve as an introduction. But once past this introduction, this book has served it’s purpose.