Instruct: Classify Amazon reviews into positive or negative sentiment
Query: Great breath, fair depth

The 3rd edition is much improved providing great breath of topic coverage. On the downside the coverage of extended stored procedures is one page so this is not a programmers book. It is one of those books that has something to say about everything SQL Server could possibly be employed to do, and that makes it unique. IMHO the publisher should break this book into a 3-4 book series and work on adding depth in future editions. Buy other books for depth at this time such as Soukup's for insights and background, SQL Server Programming for programming and England's book on Performance and Optimization and Tuning if interested. I'm a 25+ year programmer in 15 or so languages (prefering C & C++) and believe SQL is pretty easy to pick up if you are willing to read 5-6 good books. Make this one of them.