ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

WE ALL HAVE SQL SERVER books that are considered a must have; the ones that every serious SQL Server Professional displays proudly on their bookshelf but hardly ever reads. I don’t like the thought of the books that I’ve helped to create being nothing more than bookshelf trophies, so the best feedback I ever had about the SQL Server 2008 version of this book was seeing a dog-eared, well-worn copy of it bristling with color-coded bookmarks while on a customer site. That unintentional feedback from a complete stranger meant a lot to me and helped enormously to keep spirits high during the development of this book, so I’d like to thank that anonymous IT Professional and everyone else that took the time to give us feedback — this book would not have been written without you.

I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to all the authors and contributors that allowed themselves to be drawn in to this project, particularly Justin Langford and Steven Wort as they knew full well what was in store — and signed-up anyway. The previous authoring team left big shoes to fill so I had to pull out all the stops to make this book a success. I never would have imagined being able to bring together a team like this, you only have to look at everyone’s bio to see what I mean. They’re all great guys and I’m proud to have my name associated with them.

Behind every great writing team, there’s a great a team of technical editors and I’ve been very lucky to get some of the best people in the industry to critique our work during this project. I’m very grateful to those silent heroes for helping to make our work stand up to scrutiny.

Finally, I would like to thank my wife Gemma and my children Ava and Leighton for putting up with me and my fifth “last ever” authoring project in a row. I won’t be so naïve as to say “never again,” but I promise I’ll take a long break this time.

— Christian Bolton

IN THE LAST 12 MONTHS I have learned the value of collaboration, especially while writing chapters, as I wouldn’t normally do this kind of thing. First, I must thank Christian, as both my manager and the book’s lead author, for giving me the opportunity to write two chapters — chapters that offered me the chance to write in my own style and from my own perspective. Second, I must thank my two technical editors: Jonathan Kehayias and Robert Davis. Jonathan’s knowledge of virtualization gave my first chapter the quality benchmark it needed, while his community contributions about Extended Events provided invaluable research for the other chapter, which was accurately rounded out with the help of Robert’s input. Finally, thank you to Neil and Chris.

— Gavin Payne

I WANT TO ACKNOWLEDGE my wife and children — they are the reason behind almost everything I do. Also, when Christian asked me to be involved, I had no idea I would later become sick for a few months, so I greatly appreciate the support that I got from him, the team at Wiley, and James Roland-Jones (whose work on the first version of this book formed a strong foundation). The work on latches from Microsoft’s SQLCAT team was very helpful, especially that of Thomas Kejser, who also reviewed that chapter for me. These are all terrific people who should be congratulated.

— Rob Farley