In the April 2012 Question of the Month, I asked readers to tell me their favorite DBA books. I have compiled the results, and below are the most popular books my blog’s readers picked. If you are looking for a good SQL Server book to learn from, then you might want to consider reading one or more of them. Click on the image to find out more about the book.
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Internals by Kalen Delaney, Paul Randal, Kimberly Tripp, Conor Cunningham, and Adam Machanic.
SQL Server MVP Deep Dives, edited by Paul Nielsen, Kalen Delaney, Adam Machanic, and Kimberly Tripp.
SQL Server MVP Deep Dives: Volume 2, edited by Kalen Delaney, Louis Davidson, Greg Low, Paul Randal, Kimberly Tripp, and Brad McGehee.
Professional SQL Server 2008 Internals and Troubleshooting, by Christian Bolton, Justin Langford, Brent Ozar, James Rowland-Jones, Jonathan Kehayias, Cindy Gross, and Steven Wort.
Troubleshooting SQL Server—A Guide for the Accidental DBA, by Jonathan Kehayias and Ted Krueger. Available as a free PDF file here.
Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2008: T-SQL Querying, by Itzik Ben-Gan, Lubor Kollar, Dejan Sarka, and Steve Kass.
DBA Survivor: Become a Rock Star DBA, by Thomas LaRock.
Inside the SQL Server Query Optimizer, by Benjamin Nevarez. Available as a free PDF file here.
SQL Server 2005 Practical Troubleshooting, by Ken Henderson.
SQL Server 2008 Administration in Action, by Rod Colledge.
SQL Server Hardware, by Glenn Berry. Available as a free PDF file here.
The above books were the top picks, but don’t include all of the recommendations made during the April Question of the Month. To read about all of the recommended books, click here.
