When I returned from the hike, there was an excellent piece of news waiting for me: MS Press has accepted and confirmed the latest edit of the two books written by two Solid Quality teams, so the books are going in print. I was part of both teams, as the lead author of the first one and coauthor of the second one. The books are actually training kits for two SQL Server 2005 exams:
MCITP Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-441): Designing Database Solutions by Using Microsoft SQL Server 2005—by Dejan Sarka, Andy Leonard, Javier Loria, Adolfo Wiernik, and guest authors Francisco Gonzalez Diaz and Jesus Lopez—prepares you for exam 70-441, a required exam for the Microsoft Certified IT Professional: Database Developer certification, and treated many times as the most demanding SQL Server exam.
MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-445): Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Business Intelligence Implementation and Maintenance (Pro-Certification)—by Erik Veerman, Teo Lachev, Dejan Sarka, Javier Loria, and guest author Alejandro Leguizamo—prepares you for exam 70-445, required for the new Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS): SQL Server Business Intelligence certification.
You can read about these two books also on our site.
