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This is an excellent book to learn about UDB and to help you to prepare for the certification. Fairly easy to follow. You can install DB2 PE on your computer using the CD supplied which makes it even more appealing since you can try out the various commands. An excellent book for readers who want to get 700 and 701 certifications. Thanks, -PK.Ganapathy

I have been involved with DB2 for a number of years and this book definitely introduced a few new tricks to me. This is especially good reading for those migrating to v8 or thinking of migrating as it covers many of the new and changed features between v7 and v8. Despite being a good source of information, this is by far the most contradictory book I have read to date (and I have read many technical books). The most annoying contradictions are when a paragraph will state that something is IMPOSSIBLE or there is ONLY ONE WAY to do it, and then the next paragraph will list a way (or many ways) to perform that exact something. One example:

p.298 "Note: The ORDER BY clause, if used, must be the last clause in your SQL statement."

p.299 "TO limit the number of rows sorted in a SELECT, the FETCH FIRST ... ROWS [clause] must be added to the end of the ORDER BY [clause]."

This doesn't really bother me because I know why FETCH would go after ORDER BY, but why state ORDER BY must be the last clause, then go on to show that ORDER BY is in fact NOT the last clause on the next page? How about not say it at all! These types of contradictions are scattered throughout the book, but I am too irritated to list them here.

Another good example of frustrating trends in this book is also on pg.298:

"You can also rename a column using an alias."

Well, what is an alias, and how do you create one? Again, this time I knew what an alias was and how to create one from prior experience, but why Baklarz and Wong do not include an explaination here (or at least a reference) is beyond me. They do not even mention that the concept of an "alias" will used for the first time in an example on pg.315, not to mention that it also won't be clearly explained.

Much of the key material in this book is bludgeoned by contradictions, typos, and lack of information/clarity where you expect it most. If you can wade through it (if you can afford the time to figure out that a parameter in an example was indeed a misprint) then definitely get this book for the reasons listed above. If not, look elsewhere.

This book is more than a Certification Study Guide, it is a complete DB2 v8.1 reference covering in a clear and well organized manner both standard well-known DB2 features and new less known features introduced in version 8.1.
It is a must read for any administrator trying to get up-to-speed with DB2 UDB v8.1.