Acknowledgments

I am grateful for the opportunity to have worked on this book. I appreciate very much the opportunity to work with my coauthors – Jonathan Gennick, Wayne Sheffied, and the authors from the previous edition. I love working with SQL Server and doing what I can to share that enthusiasm with fellow SQL Server professionals.

Much gratitude is due to my wife Krista and our children. Krista and ATW Photography were gracious enough to provide photography services to me for this book – thank you! I am thankful to Jerry and Sheila Hurst who were influential to me. Many thanks to extended family and friends who also contributed in many different ways while I worked on this book (mostly unknowingly)!

Thanks to Louis Davidson (technical reviewer for this edition) for his hard work in reading the chapters, testing the code, and providing feedback to improve the work. And, finally, thanks to Joe Sack for allowing me to continue this book and keep it going with the new editions of SQL Server.

—Jason Brimhall

Once again I’m honored by my coauthors for their continued toleration of my presence in their book. Writing SQL is fun, and I enjoy immensely my few chapters of contribution to Jason’s and Wayne’s excellent work.

Jonathan GennickSeveral years ago, I found out that I really enjoy sharing my knowledge about SQL Server with others. Working on this book has been an extension of this sharing; an experience that I have very much enjoyed, primarily because of the great team that we had. From the entire staff at Apress working diligently behind the scenes to ensure that everything flows smoothly toward publication, to my coauthors (Jonathan Gennick and Jason Brimhall), and our technical reviewer, Louis Davidson (who had to read every word of this book and test all the code),it has been great working with this team on this book, and I hope that the work that we have all put into it is appreciated by all who read it.

Throughout the years, there have been many people that have been influential to me, usually without knowing just how influenced I was by them. Thanks to all of you for all that you have done for me.

Last, but not least, I thank my wife Karen. Without your support, I would not have been able to participate in this book. Telling you "thank you" is so inadequate in conveying my appreciation for all that you have done to help me while I’ve been working on this book. Now it’s time for us to do something special!

—Wayne Sheffield