This book is also extremely well researched. The Service Broker chapter, for example, started with a two-hour conversation with me in a Starbucks in downtown Seattle, extended through many long e-mail threads, and went through a half-dozen different reviews before it ended up in the book. In addition to the research, the material in this book was used in an "Introduction to Yukon" class that has been presented to hundreds of students all over the world, so only the topics these students found most relevant have survived.

The first major section of the book deals with the most significant new feature in SQL Server 2005—the new programming model provided by the CLR engine deeply embedded into the SQL Server engine. This feature means stored procedures, triggers, and so on can be written in the most .NET languages. I can't wait to see the first COBOL stored procedure running in SQL Server. As we have come to expect from DevelopMentor authors, these chapters are replete with well-documented code samples. Although this section was written with the database developer in mind, it will also be very useful to the DBA who has to deploy and manage CLR code in the database. After the CLR chapters, there is a chapter on the new security features that make SQL Server 2005 more secure and easier to configure with the exact permissions each user needs. The final chapter in this section covers the feature enhancements designed to make the T-SQL programmer's life easier and more productive. The highlights here are the RANK and PIVOT commands, recursive query support, and snapshot isolation. All these features have been near the top of the SQL Server wish list for several years.

The next section covers the improvement to XML integration into the database that are included in SQL Server 2005. The evolution from the XML-relational mapping technology introduced in SQL Server 200 to the native XML data type functionality in SQL Server 2005 is presented clearly, and includes an explanation of the strengths and weaknesses of each approach and when to use each technology. The XQuery chapter is an excellent tutorial on the powerful new query language for XML data introduced in SQL Server 2005. This section concludes with coverage of the new HTTP/SOAP interface that makes it easy to expose your SQL Server 2005 stored procedures and functions as SOAP methods directly from the database without requiring a Web server.

The third part of the book moves from the server feature to the new client-side features included in the Visual Studio release that accompanies SQL Server 2005. The first chapter emphasizes the client changes necessary to expose the new server features, like the XML data type and CLR user-defined types. There is also a good presentation of how to decide when to implement a function as a CLR stored procedure and when to implement it as client or middle-tier logic. This decision is much less clear-cut now that CLR code can run equally well in the server and in the client, and this section gives you the information you need to make that decision. There is also excellent coverage of the new client-side XML features available in this release. Many of the most requested features from SQLXML users are included.

Last but certainly not least, from my point of view, is excellent coverage of the SQL Server Service Broker. I spent quite a bit of time with Bob, Niels, and Dan indoctrinating them into the "Zen of Service Broker," and they put together an excellent explanation of how the Service Broker revolutionizes the way users will write database applications in the future. The power of queues as first-class database objects is presented very effectively.