It is really truer than ever that this is not an individual effort. The Packt team worked with me the whole time, so a really big thanks goes to them, especially Sai, Kedar, Apoorva, Madhuri, and many more. I cannot forget to mention Dhwani from the Packt team, as she is the one who presented the idea of this book to me. Seriously, I wouldn't have been able to author this book alone, so thanks should go to Mr. Bihag Thaker, as well, as he agreed to co-author this book with me and has worked even harder on it than I have myself.
I am really honored to have Satya, Michael, and Maria as the technical reviewers for this book. They are all well-known personalities in the world of SQL Server.
Apart from the team that worked on this book, I would also like to thank, on a personal note, two well-known personalities in the SQL Server community, who always inspire me to do more. In fact, they were the ones who diverted my interest from .NET technology to SQL Server. They are:
Pinal Dave, who blogs at SQLAuthority.com and is an author of several SQL Server books. Currently, he is working as a Technology Evangelist at Microsoft.
Jacob Sebastian, who blogs at
BeyondRelational.comand is a SQL Server MVP, book author, well-known speaker in SQL Server technology, and much more.
Most important of all, my deepest gratitude goes to my parents, Mr. Ashwin Shah and Mrs. Divya Shah. It is because of their hard work, inspiration, and motivation that a small-town boy like me, who has grown up with very limited resources, has progressed so much in life, which in itself proves where there's a will there's a way. I would also like to thank my one-and-a-half-year-old son, Teerth, who used to often start crying at midnight, because of which I would lose my sleep and, not being able to get it back, started researching more on the subjects that helped me write this book. Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Alka Shah.
Bihag Thaker is a SQL Server enthusiast, an MCTS (SQL Server 2005), and an MCITP (SQL Server 2008), who has been working with SQL Server technology for the past few years. Initially he was into .Net technology, but his keen interest for SQL Server led him to be a database specialist.
He is currently working as a database administrator. He has worked on numerous performance tuning assignments and executed large-scale database migrations. He likes to share his knowledge and enjoys helping the SQL Server community. You will find him talking about SQL Server on his blog MsSQLBlog.com.