Writing a book was a dream I had since I first began using a pen. Little did I know as a young child learning to write, that my first book would be a technical one! The experience of writing this book has been like none other, and what a memorable one at that. I had no idea just how much work or how many people would be involved: it really is a team effort!
There are many committed people at Packt Publishing who have been instrumental in bringing this book to life. I would like to thank Sonali Tharwani, Vishal Bodwani, Dilip Ventakesh, Unnati Shah, and Zinal Shah, for their crucial roles in organizing and supporting us. I must say a huge thank you to Phil Brammer and Raunak Jhawar for reviewing the book from start to finish and their fantastic suggestions to enhance the quality and usefulness of the content. Additionally, I would like to thank Allan Mitchell for his strong contribution and honest feedback. I am sure there are further people at Packt Publishing who were involved that I did not come into contact with: thank you everyone for the part you played in the delivery of this book!
I am further indebted to Li Li and Alison Coughtrie for their invaluable contribution. Thank you both for giving up your free time to review the book and provide such positive feedback. I am also grateful for the contribution Simon Robinson made to the section on Hadoop. Your knowledge and input has vastly improved this book and I will be delighted to buy you a beer to say thank you!
My gratitude extends to my dear father Colin Clements. Thank you for reading the book and making so many vital suggestions. It means so much to me that you have been a part of it.
My biggest thanks, of course, go to Jon for inviting me to co-author this book. To deliver a book even of this size is no easy task and at times it was tough working all those evenings and weekends. However, this has been such a rewarding experience and I am proud of our first attempt at book writing. Thank you for believing in me enough to give me this opportunity. Working with you is always a pleasure: I learned so much and had tremendous fun!
Jon Reade has worked in the UK and Europe as a database professional in the finance and telecommunication sectors for 16 years. He is currently a SQL Server consultant in the finance industry, based in the UK.
He began his career as a Systems Programmer for IBM, methodically testing and breaking mainframe DB2 database security systems. He graduated with a degree in Computer Science from Aston University in Birmingham before moving on to various database development roles.
He has extensive experience of SQL Server from 6.0 to 2012, in development, operational, production, and managerial roles. He is interested in business intelligence and big data, and the use of data mining to extract useful business knowledge from transactional systems. He holds MCITP and MCTS certifications for SQL Server 2008 and is a recent MSc Business Intelligence graduate from the University of Dundee, Scotland.
He is also a part-time SQL Server instructor for a global training company and the co-founder of the SQL Server Club website (www.sqlserverclub.com) and user group. He tweets (@JonReade), speaks at SQL Server events (SQLBits, DDD South West and SQL Server Club), and has written for Packt Publishing and SQL Server Central.