Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 T-SQL Fundamentals (PRO-Developer) (Paperback)

by Itzik Ben-gan (Author)
Key Phrases: programmable objects, merging data, query returns the following output, Single-Table Queries, Don Funk, Sara Davis (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
This book walks you through your first steps in T-SQL (also known as Transact-SQL), which is Microsoft SQL Server s dialect of the standard ANSI-SQL language. You ll learn the theory behind T-SQL querying and programming, how to develop T-SQL code to query and modify data, and get an overview of programmable objects. Although this book is intended for beginners, it is not merely a step-by-step book. It goes beyond the syntactical elements of T-SQL and explains the logic behind the language and its elements. Many aspects of SQL are unique to the language, and are very different from other programming languages. This book helps you adopt the right state of mind and gain a true understanding of the language elements. You learn how to think in terms of sets and follow good SQL programming practices. The book is not version-specific; it does, however, cover language elements that were introduced in recent versions of SQL Server, including SQL Server 2008. To complement the learning experience, the book provides exercises that enable you to practice what you ve learned. The book starts with a theoretical background to T-SQL querying and programming (Chapter 1) laying the foundations for the rest of the book, and also coverage of creating tables and defining data integrity. The book moves on to various aspects of querying and modifying data (Chapters 2 through 8), then to a discussion of concurrency and transactions (Chapter 9), and finally provides an overview of programmable objects (Chapter 10). This book features a companion Web site that makes available to you all the code used in the book, the errata, additional resources, and more.

Product Details

• Paperback: 688 pages
• Publisher: Microsoft Press (October 22, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0735626014
• ISBN-13: 978-0735626010
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #10,012 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars There just is no point in writing another book on T-SQL after this, February 9, 2009

By	Mladen Andrijasevic (Israel) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Film director Stanley Kubrick would make a film in a specific genre, after which there was almost no point in making movies in that genre any more. War movie - Paths of Glory, political satire - Dr Strangelove , historical film - Spartacus, science fiction - 2001 A Space Odyssey, horror - The Shining. Itzik Ben-Gan managed to do with his book what Kubrick did with his films. There just is no point in writing another book on T-SQL after his.

The first thing I looked for when I picked the book at the post office was the section on Outer Joins. A common question when using outer joins that is the source of lot of confusion is whether to specify a predicate in the ON or WHERE clause of the query. Itzik explains it definitively: " You can see that with respect to rows from the preserved side of an outer join, the filter based on the ON predicate is not final. In other words, the ON predicate does not detremine whether the row will show up in the output, only whether it will be matched with rows from the other side. So when you need to express a predicate that is not final - meaning a predicate that determines which rows to match from the nonpreserved side - specify the predicate in the ON clause. When you need a filter to be applied after outer rows are produced, and you want the filter to be final, specify the predicate in the WHERE clause. "

If only I this book existed ten years ago I would have avoided some of the mistakes I made through the years, only because some fundamental things were never clearly explained. Itzik fills the gaps for an exprienced DBA and gives a perfect basis for a novice. The fundamentals become crystal clear so that building on top of it is easy. Perhaps this can be best illustrated by the following example:

"Can you figure out how to write an UPDATE statement that swaps the values in col1 and col2? In most programming languages where expressions and assigments are evaluated in some order (typically left to write) , you need a temporary variable. However, because in SQL all assignments take place as if at the same point in time, the solution is very simple:

UPDATE dbo.T1
set col1= col2, col2 = col1;

In both assigments the source column values used are those prior to the update, so you don't need a temporary variable."

Now why did no other book I read ever give this simple example?

Common Table Expressions are explained really well, especially updating and deleting data using CTEs. Actually, the book covers all the 2005 and 2008 related enhacements ROW_NUMBER, RANK, DENSE_RANK and NTILE, Recursive Queries, APPLY,CROSS APPLY, OUTER APPLY,EXCEPT and INTERSECT, TRY...CATCH, TOP Enhancements, PIVOT UNPIVOT, DDL Triggers, MERGE. But it covers it in such a way that nothing seems complicated. We should give it to all out C++ programmers as well.

It was a pleasure reading the book

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book - clear focus and ordered presentation, December 4, 2008

By	Regan J. Wick "Regan Wick" (New Jersey) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I have worked with T-SQL for about 11 years, but nevertheless immediately pre-ordered this "Fundamentals" book when I saw a blog post about it - for three reasons: (a) I wanted to fill in any missing gaps in my understanding of the language, (b) I wanted to learn what was new with the 2008 offering, and (c) I have heard Itzik Ben-gan speak and read his blog for sometime and always find his presentations to be excellent. I was not disappointed.

For me, this has been one of those rare reads, where I can see where the topic is going but it is never dull because I either learn something new about the subject or the presentation clarifies what I already knew. I especially like how the book continually reinforces how T-SQL is built on set theory and predicate logic.

Great read and reference. I highly recommend it.

Kudos to the author.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not just syntax, but the theory behind it, December 15, 2008

By	UberGoober - See all my reviews

I'm half way through this book and I am totally impressed. The author not only explains T-SQL syntax very systematically, but also explains enough of the theory behind it to help you understand why. This makes it much easier to optimize your syntax and avoid logical bugs in your code. This is not an introductory level SQL book, but it's not a book for experts either. I have been writing SQL for years and I have learned a great deal from this book already. I highly recommend this book if you are looking to take your SQL skills from basic/intermediate to a more advanced level.