Holy cats! Writing a book is really hard. Fortunately, there's this incredible support team that gathers around as you write these things. From Apress: Jonathan Gennick, thank you for the opportunity and support; Richard Dal Porto, thanks for keeping everything organized; Douglas Pundick, nice work on the edits, and I'm sorry there was so much for you to do; Kim Wimpsett and Kelly Winquist, same thing. My technical editor, well, "I'm not worthy" is the best that can be said, but my sincere appreciation goes to Joseph Sack for the absolutely outstanding work he did on this book. You've all done amazing work. Anything that's wrong with the book now is my responsibility, not yours.

I have to also show appreciation to all the folks over at the SQL Server Central forums. Steve Jones and Andy Warren created quite a community over there. Steve, Gail, Jeff, Jack, Barry, Lynn, and all the rest I haven't mention specifically, thank you for all the help over the years.

I work for a fantastic company with great people where I've had opportunities to learn and grow. Thanks to Jack Dewar, my manager, and Bill Hawkins, his boss. My thanks to the DBA team who have taught me so much: Peter, Ted, Basem, AJ, Dave M., Dave H., Chris K., Chris P., Yuting, Ray, Raj, and Det.

I want to thank the folks at Red Gate for making terrific tools including SQL Prompt, which I used to write and format all the T-SQL code in the book.

Finally, before someone starts playing music and pushing me off the stage, I want to show appreciation to the family—my wife and kids. This is the second book you've allowed me to write. Thank you for putting up with me so well.

Grant Fritchey