general

Lots of books will give you TSQL syntax. Very few will teach you the insides of the language, the secrets that only the masters know. This book teaches you those secrets. It will take you from being a novice to being an expert.

Its hard to pick a favorite chapter from among so many good ones. Here are my favorites:

1. SELECT chapter - this is a tour de force of all that can be done with the SELECT command. I went in thinking it would be lame. I came out being amazed at the power of this simple command.

2. Statistical commands - this is a collection of powerful queries that show how to compute numerous types of statistical figures from Sql Server databases.

3. Arrays - this chapter is a life-saver if you need array-like functionality from TSQL.

4. Administrative TSQL - this chapter has several scripts that professional DBA's would kill for. Worth the price of the book alone.

This book is priceless. Within a week of getting it, it helped me solve two separate T-SQL problems that had been dogging me for years. The author is a genius. He seems to have superstar abilities in solving difficult technical problems as well as in explaining how he did it. Even finding those qualities in one person is rare, let alone getting them to write a book. I've only had the book for about a month, and already it's showing signs of wear. And I really like the epigraphs that start each chapter. They're thought-provoking and insightful. They help us keep things in perspective.

My favorite chapters are: - T-SQL data type nuances - Cursors - Transactions - Stored Procedures & Triggers - T-SQL Performance Tuning - OLE Automation - Undocumented T-SQL

The chapter on performance and the one on Automation are particularly good. I can definitely recommend this book. It's the only one like it on the market.

My company has a mix of SQL Svr 6.5, 7.0, and 2000 servers. Unfortunately, much of the code in this book is not portable across the three versions - it requires at least 7.0 if not 2000. Probably half of it will not run on 6.5. Our corp dev standards require T-SQL that runs on all three, so we couldn't use some of the code in the book.

Other than that the book is very good. I had to turn quoted_identifer off to run some of the scripts, but they all run on 7.0 and 2000 just fine. Not only that but they teach a lot of the new features and secrets of using the language. How to write system-level code and how to use undocumented features. We're using the array code in two of our systems as I speak.

I'm not saying that requiring SQL Svr 7.0/2000 is a fundamental weakness but it's why I can't give the book 5 stars. If you are on 7.0 or later and want to write high-quality, speedy, professional code, this is the book to have. If you need code that is portable back to 6.5 I would suggest Klein's book instead.