>Don't these books just get you! I have spent a small fortune on books and they all take a significant slug of time out of your life. There's not one thats under 500-600 pages and they are mostly in excess of 1000+ pages nowadays. <

They are all long winded, and usually costly. I think I spent most of the first 4 months of this year just reading (VFP, SQL 2000, CodeMine, etc., etc.,etc.).

You might want to also check out "SQL Server Magazine" at www.sqlmag.com. Somehow they sent me a free subscription and I found the articles well suited for me as a newbie although the mag is not geared toward newbies necessarily (like in how to install SQL 2000, the article handled the whole procedure in a few pages whereas the books spend about 300 pages <bg>).

Also, in case you don't already know about this, check out http://www.fawcette.com/vsm/ as I think they pretty much have everything in their mag's free now online - and personally I think their mag's are some of the best. The VisualStudio mag usually has articles dealing with SQL 2000.

Mel Cummings