For me, the most wonderful thing about writing a book and having it published is getting feedback from you, the readers. Of course, it's also one of the worst things when I get feedback from readers who are frustrated that their favorite topics were not included. However, by this third time around, I think I can accept the fact that this book cannot be all things to all people, as much as I might want it to be. Microsoft SQL Server 2005 is such a huge, complex product that not even with a new multi-volume format can we cover every feature. My hope is that you'll look at the cup as half full instead of half empty and appreciate the volumes of Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2005 for what they do include. As for the topics that aren't included, I hope you'll find the information you need in other sources.

The focus of this series, as the name Inside implies, is on the core SQL Server enginein particular, the query processor and the storage engine. This series doesn't talk about client programming interfaces, heterogeneous queries, business intelligence, or replication. In fact, most of the high-availability features are not covered, but a few, such as mirroring, are mentioned at a high level when we discuss database property settings. I don't drill into the details of some internal operations, such as securityI had to draw the line somewhere or else we would need 10 volumes in the series and have no hope of finishing it before the release of the next version of the product!