Quite simple, the MicroSoft books are useless and don't contain any of the core information that comes up in the exams. The video's, though interesting, again don't go into the debt of what you need to learn before you take the exam.

All the MicroSoft material that I've come across, seems to be seriously dumbed down and when these are targeted directly for the exam in question, you get a feeling it's just all about making MicroSoft more money.

In saying that, the qualifications themselves are very good to have. Indirectly, they show that the individual is committed to technical learning and also has the ability to apply themselves. So no matter what, it's also a bonus to have.

My Notes

Enterprise addition caters for clustering, SAN support and ''dimensions''

Windows CE Version

Client Access License for workstations

Use dedicated user account to install SQL Server

install SQL in domain with access to all user accounts

Local system account can not communicate with other computers on the network

16 possible named instances

collation, how plhyiscal data is stored eg. using 1 byte or 2

n = unicode for data types

collation defines code pages for language and how to sort etc. in comparisons

Windows Collation, uses windows locale settings

SQL collati9on, supports backwards compatibility for older SQL.

start setup then leave (unattended file)

remote install, need to be admin on remote

Service password / login should be unique

default, SQL server agent is not started

clients communcate with a special network protocol

Change using network utility

port 1434 UDP to get client connections

port 1433 for TCP/IP

Every installation, SQLSTP, log file, c:\winnt\sqlstp.log

Mixed mode with SQL Server

Data is stored in 8KB blocks of continious disk space called pages. 128 Pages per MB

Rows cannot span pages, 8060 minus row overhead etc.

Extents, of 8 pages, 64KB

MDF, broken into extents then into pages

Owner or creater can manger DB files etc.

Secondary data files are .ndf

buffer cache, contains data pages loaded from disk

Changes mnade to buffer cache are written to tranaction log and then to disk "write ahead log"

Checkpoint process writes all transactions to log

auto recovery, roll forward and transactions from last checkpoint rols back any non finished

sp_dboption to alter DB

DBCC, db console commands, check physical and logical consistency

expanding files in small amounts increases fragmentation

After database pubs set auto_shrink on

different file group helps backing up. Put tables into new filegroup onto faster disk

files group => db files => tables

performance vs. fault tolerance

filegroup contains tables and indexes. INdexes causes issues when backing up.