Basit A. Masood-Al-Farooq is an internationally known Lead SQL DBA, Trainer and Technical Author, with twelve years experience of the Microsoft technology stack. He is an accomplished development and production SQL Server DBA, with a proven record of delivering major projects on time and within budget. He is expert at evaluating client's needs against the capabilities of the SQL Server product set, with the objective of minimizing cost and maximizing function through making innovative use of advance capabilities. Basit has authored numerous SQL Server technical articles on various SQL Server topics, for different SQL Server community sites that include http://sqlmag.com/, www.mssqltips.com/, www.sqlservercentral.com/, www.sswug.org/, www.sql-server-performance.com/, and http://searchsqlserver.techtarget.com/. He has also developed and implemented many successful database infrastructure, data warehouse and business intelligence projects. He also has a good understanding of ITIL principals. He holds a Master's degree in Computer Science from London Metropolitan University, and industry standard certifications from Microsoft, Sun, Cisco, Brainbench, Prosoft, and APM, including MCITP Database Administrator 2008, MCITP Database Administrator 2005, MCDBA SQL Server 2000 and MCTS .NET Framework 2.0 Web Applications.

He can be reached via twitter (@BasitAali), blog (http://basitaalishan.com), or via LinkedIn. His LinkedIn profile address is http://uk.linkedin.com/in/basitfarooq.

I have not worked on any other book but I regularly write technical articles on various SQL Server topics, for different SQL Server community sites such as http://sqlmag.com/, www.mssqltips.com/, www.sqlservercentral.com/, www.sswug.org/, www.sql-server-performance.com/, and http://searchsqlserver.techtarget.com/.

Varinder Sandhu is an IT professional. He is a Microsoft-certified SQL Server Database Administrator and technology specialist in Microsoft .NET Framework—Application Development Foundation. He has a Master of Computer Application (MCA) degree from Sikkim Manipal University and a B Sc. in Computer Science from Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar. He has around 6 years of IT experience with a contribution in all aspects of the software engineering process, from architecture and requirements definition, through design, estimating, coding, testing, and maintenance of software applications.

Check out his blog at www.varindersandhu.in.

SIVAKUMAR VELLINGIRI is a Senior Technical Lead at Prokarma Softech (P) Ltd, India. He has been a part of the IT industry for more than 10 years. During his career, he has worked primarily with SQL Server and Business Intelligence technologies. Siva has worked on many Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing, Database design, performance tuning and optimization for high transactional systems. He is a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist and is certified in SQL Server and Business Intelligence.

Siva writes frequently on his blog http://sivasqlbi.blogspot.in on various subjects concerning SQL Server and Business Intelligence technologies. When he is not in front of a computer, he plays with his 10 month old son, Sachin.

Valentino Vranken is a Senior Microsoft BI Consultant working for Ordina, Belgium (Europe). Ever since the start of his career he has been gathering experience using various programming languages to manipulate data in SQL Server databases. Nowadays, his focus is mainly on Business Intelligence implementations, still using SQL Server.

In terms of certification, Valentino has earned two MCITP (BI and DEV) and three MCTS (BI, DEV, and DBA) certifications on SQL Server 2008, and has also passed two out of three exams to reach MCSA on SQL Server 2012.

In his free time, he is active as a Board Member of the Belgian SQL Server User Group (www.sqlug.be), writes articles for his blog (http://blog.hoegaerden.be), and helps the community through several technical forums. Many of his articles are republished at well-known specialist sites.

In 2012, he received the MVE (Most Valuable Expert) award in recognition of his outstanding community contributions at Experts Exchange.

You can follow him on Twitter: @ValentinoV42.