The Microsoft Data Warehouse Toolkit : With SQL Server 2005 and the Microsoft Business Intelligence Toolset

Delivering Business Intelligence with Microsoft SQL Server 2005

Professional SQL Server 2005 Integration Services (Programmer to Programmer)

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services 2005

Sql

Data Mining with SQL Server 2005

Format: Paperback
Author: ZhaoHui Tang
ReleaseDate: 07 October, 2005
Publisher: Wiley
Rating:

A bible for those using SQL 2005
True. Some people commented on the poor editing: typos & some wrong pictures. (It detracts, but you can figure it out easily)
Some stated that it is not a good general overview of Data Mining. True (though it has a bit of a summary)
Some stated that is doesn't discuss business applications in detail. Yes, (it only makes brief reference to them).
Some stated that it is very vendor specific. Hello, read the title - SQL 2005.

It is a must read for anyone who wants to take maximum advantage of SQL Server 2005 Data Mining. It goes thru all the algorithms, tells you how each one works, how to tune them & how to embed them into your applications. It compliments the Books On-Line materials, tutorials & sample code that ship with the product.
(interesting how people pay for a textbook & never bother to read the copous amount of materials that ships with the product. )

It does give you a bit of background in DM, & does walk you thru using the tools (SSMS & BIDS) used to create & administer the Data Mining.
It doesn't talk about using the Data Mining Viewer controls in Visual Studio 2005.

It is an easy read & very informative. Especially if you go to the trouble of downloading the samples & data from the web site & actually build the models with the book & step thru the code.

While it isn't really an indepth treatment of DMX in the way that "George Spofford's MDX Solutions" is for MDX. It does give you more than enough examples to be able to create, train & predict from the models.

It also gives enough to embed your DM models into your applications, Use them from Excel & take full advantage of the DM built-into SQL Intergration Services.

If you want an DM Overview for business use - check out Barry Lindof's book.

Helpful to a Point
SEEMS TO GO INTO THE "MATH" A BIT TOO MUCH, AND MOST WAS OVER MY HEAD. I BOUGHT THIS BOOK HOPING IT WOULD GIVE ME SOME INSIGHT AND BACKGROUND TO BEGIN USING 2005, AND IT DID JUST THAT. COULD HAVE USED A BIT MORE ABOUT THE MMC AND HOW TO USE THAT TO BETTER USE, BUT ALL IN ALL A BOOK THAT IS GOOD FOR MY LIBRRAY. F ANYONE KNOWS OF A GOOD RESOURCE ON USING THE MMC IN SQL2K5 LET ME KNOW:-).

Decent Book
The book is good, but I was disappointed in it as well on three fronts. At the time I'm writing this review this book is the only one available dedicated solely to the data mining features of SQL Server 2005. First, there is a chapter dedicated to each of the data mining algorithms. I didn't find the business use case examples for when, why, and how to use each algorithm sufficient. Second, each of the algorithm chapters goes off the deep-end explaining the mathematical basis for the algorithm. There are very, very few developers who are going to remember enough of their college mathematics to follow along. Third, the technical coverage of how to use the APIs and the data mining extension language (DMX) is superficial, particularly with DMX. After reading this book cover to cover I couldn't go off and write a DMX query if I wanted to. On the application I'm working on we are planning to implement our own web visualization viewers for the data mining algorithms. This book didn't give me what I needed in understanding the object model exposed by the APIs in order to handle the back-end coding for this. All in all, if you are planning to do data mining with SQL Server 2005 I would recommend this book only because at the time of this writing there is nothing else available. However, you will learn quite a bit about data mining with it and depending on your prior experience (more is better) it might be an excellent fit for you.