SQL Server 2008 Administration isn't a standard SQL Server tutorial-there are dozens of those to choose from. Instead, this book breaks down the role of "SQL Server Administrator" into its key focus areas and tasks and details the techniques and best practices that make an administrator effective. In this book, a reader can quickly identify a task and find the best practice associated with it. For example, a reader looking for information about indexing would find step-by-step procedures for identifying and dropping unused indexes, creating missing indexes, selecting the appropriate clustered index, and so forth.

Each technique is presented in a clear, straightforward style and in the order of the typical lifecycle of a SQL Server system. This allows a reader to easily open the book at the appropriate page and focus on what you need to know for each specific situation.

While most techniques will work for all versions of SQL Server, this book is current for the recent final release of SQL Server 2008