Advanced Querying Techniques From a SQL Guru
Review by SQL-Server-Performance.com
Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2005: T-SQL Querying
By Itzik Ben-Gan, Lubor Kollar, and Dejan Sarka
632 pages. Microsoft Press. $44.99.
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There are many self-proclaimed SQL gurus around. Very few of them are gifted with a special talent that makes it so incredibly easy to write, breathe, and live elegant and efficient SQL. The vast majority of us lesser mortals can only try, through hard work and, sometimes, painfully acquired experience, to reach a certain level of SQL understanding. And, of course, to suck the knowledge from these true SQL gurus if they are so good as to share their knowledge in the form of community postings, articles, or even books.
One of these generally accepted SQL gurus is Itzik Ben-Gan; another, Steve Kass. As it happened that one of them wrote a book, for which the other was technical editor. It’s as if Easter and Christmas fall on the same day. It can’t get much better. T-SQL Querying is the first of a two-book look into the developer side of the Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2005 series. (The other book is Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2005: T-SQL Programming.)
T-SQL Querying covers the following topics:
- Logical Query Processing.
- Physical Query Processing.
- Query Tuning.
- Subqueries, Table Expressions, and Ranking Functions.
- Joins und Set Operations.
- Aggregating and Pivoting Data.
- TOP and Apply.
- Data Modification.
- Graphs, Trees, Hierarchies, and Recursive Queries.
Inside SQL Server 2000, by Kalen Delaney, was regarded by many people as the “bible” for SQL Server users. The decision to split it into four separate books for the 2005 edition, and to choose Itzik Ben-Gan as the author of the T-SQL part, resolved its only weak point.
There is not really much that needs to be said about this book. It is a must have book for every serious SQL Server developer.
Because readers of this book should already be in an advanced stage of SQL enlightenment, I’ll end merely with a link to the errata for T-SQL Querying: Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2005: T-SQL Querying comments and corrections.
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