Myself and 52 other SQL Server MVPs have been working on a SQL Server book for the past year or so. All the authors of this book have donated 100% of their royalties to support War Child International. You can visit www.warchild.org to learn more about this charity.

You can already pre-order the book from Amazon here: SQL Server MVP Deep Dives or you can get the early access edition from Manning here: http://www.manning.com/nielsen/

SQL Server MVP Deep Dives is organized into five parts: Design and Architecture, Development, Administration, Performance Tuning and Optimization, and Business Intelligence.

All the chapters are listed below

PART I DATABASE DESIGN AND ARCHITECTURE
Paul Nielsen, Editor

1. Louis and Paul's 10 relational database design rules by Paul Nielsen and Louis Davidson
2. SQL Server tools for maintaining data integrity by Louis Davidson
3. Finding functional dependencies by Hugo Kornelis

PART II DATABASE DEVELOPMENT
Adam Machanic, Editor

4. Set-based iteration: the third alternative by Hugo Kornelis
5. Gaps and islands by Itzik Ben-Gan
6. Error handling in SQL Server and applications by Bill Graziano
7. Pulling apart the FROM clause by Rob Farley
8. What makes a bulk insert a minimally logged operation? by Denis Gobo
9. Avoiding three common query mistakes by Kathi Kellenberger
10. Introduction to XQuery on SQL Server by Michael Coles
11. SQL Server XML frequently asked questions by Michael Coles
12. Using XML to transport relational data by Matija Lah
13. Full text searching by Robert C. Cain
14. Simil: an algorithm to look for similar strings by Tom Van Stiphout
15. LINQ to SQL and the ADO.NET Entity Framework by Bob Beauchemin
16. Table-valued parameters by Don Kiely
17. Build your own index by Erland Sommarskog
18. Getting and staying connected—or not by William Vaughn
19. Extending your productivity in SSMS and Query Analyzer by Pawel Potasinski
20. Why every SQL developer needs to have a tools database by Denis Gobo
21. Deprecation feature by Cristian Lefter
22. Placing SQL Server in your pocket by Christopher Fairbairn
23. Mobile data strategies by John Baird

PART III DATABASE ADMINISTRATION
Kimberly L. Tripp and Paul S. Randal, Editors

24. What does it mean to be a DBA? by Brad McGehee
25. Working with maintenance plans by Tibor Karaszi
26. PowerShell in SQL Server by Richard Siddaway
27. Automating SQL Server management using Server Management Objects by Allen White
28. Practical auditing in SQL Server 2008 by Jasper Smith
29. My favorite DMVs and why by Aaron Bertrand
30. Reusing space in a table by Joe Webb
31. Some practical issues in table partitioning by Ron Talmage
32. Partitioning for manageability (and maybe performance) by Dan Guzman
33. Faster, smaller, and more energy-efficient backups without indexes by Greg Linwood
34. Using database mirroring to become a superhero! by Glenn Berry
35. The poor man's SQL Server log shipping by Edwin Sarmiento
36. Some understated changes found in SQL Server 2005 replication by Paul Ibison
37. High performance transactional representation by Hilary Cotter
38. Successfully implementing Kerberos delegation by Scott Stauffer
39. Running SQL Server on Hyper-V by John Paul Cook

PART IV PERFORMANCE TUNING AND OPTIMIZATION
Kalen Delaney, Editor

40. When is an unused index not an unused index? by Rob Farley
41. Speeding up queries with index covering by Alex Kuznetsov
42. Tracing the deadlock by Gail Shaw
43. How to optimize tempdb performance by Brad McGehee
44. Does the order of columns in an index matter? by Joe Webb
45. Correlating SQL Profiler with Windows Performance Monitor by Kevin Kline
46. Using correlation to improve query performance by Gert-Jan Strik
47. Dr. DMV: how to use Dynamic Management Views by Glenn Berry
48. Query performance and disk I/O counters by Linchi Shea
49. XEVENT: the next event infrastructure for SQL Server by Cristian Lefter

PART V BI DEVELOPMENT
Greg Low, Editor

50. BI for the relational guy by Erin Welker
51. Unlocking the secrets of SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services by William Vaughn
52. Reporting Services tips and tricks by Bruce Loehle-Conger
53. SQL Server Audit: change tracking or change data capture? by Aaron Bertrand
54. Introduction to SSAS data mining by Dejan Sarka
55. To aggregate or not to aggregate: is there really a question? by Erin Welker
56. Incorporating data profiling in the ETL process by John Welch
57. Expressions in SQL Server Integration Services by Matthew Roche
58. SSIS performance tips by Phil Brammer
59. Incremental loads using T-SQL and SSIS by Andy Leonard

As you can see the list of authors of this book consist of a lot of well known SQL Server gurus who answer questions in newsgroups, write books, are involved with podcasts and have blogs. You probably already know most of these people.

I reviewed several chapters for this book and wrote two chapters myself; these chapters are Chapter 8 (What makes a bulk insert a minimally logged operation?) and chapter 20 (Why every SQL developer needs to have a tools database). One of the things I like about this book is that you can start reading any chapter you want; there is no need to first finish a number of different chapters before you will understand what the chapter you want to read about. All chapters are self contained. You want to learn how to optimize tempdb performance? Then read chapter 43.

All in all I think this book is good for any SQL Server developer/administrator. Amazon has the book listed at 37% off the list price, so hurry up and pre-order today. And if you are not a SQL Server developer/administrator, remember this could be a nice stocking stuffer for that DBA at work :-)

*** If you have a SQL related question try our Microsoft SQL Server Programming forum or our Microsoft SQL Server Admin forum