The downside to this book is that it is from 2000, and the code snippets are no longer available online. Also, since this book was written, there is a new Microsoft SQL Server product called 2005, that this book doesn't talk about obviously.

I don't recommend this book, because I really only got a few tips out of it. It's not suited well for a beginner or advanced user. It just kind of covers the whole range. And it's time to move on to books that use the latest software.

...this would be it.

I have worked with Microsoft SQL Server day in and day out for many years now, and I have owned this book ever since it first came out. I have had some pretty funky tasks to perform with data and this book has come through with excellent solutions each and every time. I absolutely cannot tout it highly enough. It is easy to read, and full of actually useful code examples and information rather than pages of code printouts that are just filler.

If you work writing code for SQL Server, this book belongs on your bookshelf, if not on your desk.

...this would be it.

I have worked with Microsoft SQL Server day in and day out for many years now, and I have owned this book ever since it first came out. I have had some pretty funky tasks to perform with data and this book has come through with excellent solutions each and every time. I absolutely cannot tout it highly enough. It is easy to read, and full of actually useful code examples and information rather than pages of code printouts that are just filler.

If you work writing code for SQL Server, this book belongs on your bookshelf, if not on your desk.

I bought this book seven years ago when doing my MCDBA in SQL Server 7.0. At the time I was focussing on getting my certifications and upon a cursory browsing, just couldn't get into this book.

Well it's now 2007, and having spent the last 7 years working with SQL Server 7.0, 2000 and 2005 I decided it was time to try this book again. I mention this to give a reference to where I'm coming from when I type the following comments.

First up, with the passage of time since publication, one would expect the material in this book to be well out of date - and as it turns out, you would not be disappointed. So before reading, I checked if any newer editions had been published since the first edition, and discovered there have been none - an assumed expectation considering the success of this book and that SQL Server has been updated and will continue to do so. As a consequence, expect some of the material and examples to be somewhat outdated (Transact-SQL syntax and methods have changed somewhat since publication). As an example, the section on error handling in stored procedures chapter has been outdated with TRY...CATCH exception handling, along with other examples of Transact-SQL syntax flagged to be retired.

All that aside, the true value in this book is the Transact-SQL samples. The author progresses through a problem using increasingly advanced SQL statements and explains each along the way. There is a sequence of chapters on "Runs and Sequences", "Arrays", "Sets" and "Hierarchies" that I thought could have been referenced elsewhere with more pages spent on practical areas of interest. Otherwise, as you can read from other reviews, the material covered is generally of a high standard.

As stated in other reviews, this is not a "Learn Transact-SQL" book, but more of a "Here is some Transact-SQL code that might help you".

The CD included contains just the Transact-SQL code samples from the book and is arranged in per chapter folder hierarchy.

Overall - a great if not somewhat terse effort. However, an updated version covering the Transact-SQL language changes in SQL 2005 would make this a 5 star book.

I bought this book seven years ago when doing my MCDBA in SQL Server 7.0. At the time I was focussing on getting my certifications and upon a cursory browsing, just couldn't get into this book.

Well it's now 2007, and having spent the last 7 years working with SQL Server 7.0, 2000 and 2005 I decided it was time to try this book again. I mention this to give a reference to where I'm coming from when I type the following comments.

First up, with the passage of time since publication, one would expect the material in this book to be well out of date - and as it turns out, you would not be disappointed. So before reading, I checked if any newer editions had been published since the first edition, and discovered there have been none - an assumed expectation considering the success of this book and that SQL Server has been updated and will continue to do so. As a consequence, expect some of the material and examples to be somewhat outdated (Transact-SQL syntax and methods have changed somewhat since publication). As an example, the section on error handling in stored procedures chapter has been outdated with TRY...CATCH exception handling, along with other examples of Transact-SQL syntax flagged to be retired.

All that aside, the true value in this book is the Transact-SQL samples. The author progresses through a problem using increasingly advanced SQL statements and explains each along the way. There is a sequence of chapters on "Runs and Sequences", "Arrays", "Sets" and "Hierarchies" that I thought could have been referenced elsewhere with more pages spent on practical areas of interest. Otherwise, as you can read from other reviews, the material covered is generally of a high standard.

As stated in other reviews, this is not a "Learn Transact-SQL" book, but more of a "Here is some Transact-SQL code that might help you".

The CD included contains just the Transact-SQL code samples from the book and is arranged in per chapter folder hierarchy.

Overall - a great if not somewhat terse effort. However, an updated version covering the Transact-SQL language changes in SQL 2005 would make this a 5 star book.

This book was recommended by a SQL consultant our company hired to improve the speed of our servers and it was well worth it! It covered a lot of the topics he had trained us on and gave very easy to follow examples.

Although it's billed as a T-SQL book and it's written specifically for SQL Server 2000, I'd recommend this book for anyone who wants to learn more about SQL. Programming books are by and large a wasteland of fluff, bloat, poor writing, sloppy mistakes, and misinformation - this book is a happy exception. The writer clearly knows his stuff, he writes in a no-nonsense conversational style, and he has a knack for zeroing in on the tricky subtleties and making them clear. This is practically unheard of in the realm of programming literature. (Since writing this series of books, the author has been hired by the evil empire in Redmond, so I wouldn't expect his next book to be nearly as disarmingly frank and insightful as this one.)

Although it's billed as a T-SQL book and it's written specifically for SQL Server 2000, I'd recommend this book for anyone who wants to learn more about SQL. Programming books are by and large a wasteland of fluff, bloat, poor writing, sloppy mistakes, and misinformation - this book is a happy exception. The writer clearly knows his stuff, he writes in a no-nonsense conversational style, and he has a knack for zeroing in on the tricky subtleties and making them clear. This is practically unheard of in the realm of programming literature. (Since writing this series of books, the author has been hired by the evil empire in Redmond, so I wouldn't expect his next book to be nearly as disarmingly frank and insightful as this one.)

I've used this book as a reference for 3 years.

Great straight forward examples. Logical presentation.

If you dream in SQL (you know who you are) this is a great book to own.

I thought "SQL for Smarties" was the end-all for knowledge in SQL. It is not. "Guru's Guide to Transact-SQL" is. Disclaimer: this book is not for the faint-of-heart. It is not for the beginner looking to learn SQL. It is not for the casual developer who's in it just to make a living
It is for advanced developers, looking to solve some pretty intricate problems in elegant ways through SQL, rather than through program code.
I have to admit that I pored over this book and couldn't follow every solution given. However, even when I couldn't, I understood the general ideas. More importantly, such examples opened my mind up to the possibilities of SQL, possibilities I previously did not know existed.
There is no fluff in this book. Concrete examples of problems that you WILL encounter as a developer. Beautiful solutions to those problems.
Hmmm, a book that solves your problems and gives you food for thought on the subject at hand. that's a winning book to me. I found it utterly fascinating. It was a summer's reading.

I thought "SQL for Smarties" was the end-all for knowledge in SQL. It is not. "Guru's Guide to Transact-SQL" is. Disclaimer: this book is not for the faint-of-heart. It is not for the beginner looking to learn SQL. It is not for the casual developer who's in it just to make a living
It is for advanced developers, looking to solve some pretty intricate problems in elegant ways through SQL, rather than through program code.
I have to admit that I pored over this book and couldn't follow every solution given. However, even when I couldn't, I understood the general ideas. More importantly, such examples opened my mind up to the possibilities of SQL, possibilities I previously did not know existed.
There is no fluff in this book. Concrete examples of problems that you WILL encounter as a developer. Beautiful solutions to those problems.
Hmmm, a book that solves your problems and gives you food for thought on the subject at hand. that's a winning book to me. I found it utterly fascinating. It was a summer's reading.

Buy, borrow, or STEAL THIS BOOK!

I'm a fairly heavy duty database developer and have worked with SQL, Oracle and SQL Server, for the last 8 years. My current situation is that I am working with 10-12 databases, some of them extremely complex and am supporting 12-15 different applications that interact with the databases.

I bought this book about two years ago because one of the applications I support pretends to be a data warehouse and joins data across all of these databases into a seamless picture of corporate activity. The book immediately paid for itself as I was able to resolve a dozen different problems that had been impossible the week before and we finished the application on time and under budget. How frequently do you say that?

That was impressive but what impresses me even more is the fact that I still consult this book at least twice a week. Recently I was stumped by an inconsistent bug in the joins in a particularly difficult query. The section on derived tables not only solved the problem but it reduced the amount of time required to run the query by 80%.

I am always impressed with Ken Henderson's ability to discuss complex topics in an easily understood way. The examples are clear and concise and are extremely good at clarifying his points.

A reviewer commented that this book is not good for the casual user, I'd have to strongly agree with him on that. This book isn't entitled "T-SQL for Dummies", it's called a "Guru's Guide" for a good reason. This is the book to reach for when your 45 line query joining 18 different tables in 4 different databases isn't getting the right answers and the boss wants it working right now!

This textbook on TSQL covers not only the basics such as DML, DDL and basic data types, but also talks about advanced topics such as Transactions,Stored procs, Triggers and Performance tuning in very good detail. If you are ever thinking of writing a SQL Server sproc or an app layer on top of it, read this book first.

This book has no coherent structure, but is a conglomeration of tips. Many of the coding examples use fairly complex SQL without explaining it. The join section is laughably short. It is probably most useful for someone already experienced in SQL who can read through it to pull out "tips". I have been away from SQL for a few years and wanted to brush up and this absolutely was not the book to buy. What a waste of money.

It depends on what your definition of "Guru's guide" is, but for me this was exactly the book I've needed to get from self-educated try-and-fail SQL wannabe to proficient programmer. Thank you, Ken!

This is a must have book for anybody using T-SQL. I have seen many brilliant people pick the book up for a few seconds and walk away learning something they didn't know about T-SQL.

This book is so incoherent, it has none form or shape. sorry Ken, I have to say this is not even a piece of crap, it is a stool of diaharea.

The book has no main theme or thread, just pieces of tips thrown at readers. the title should be changed to "a dummy's tips to SQL"... flush!

I picked this book up a ways back, when I was maybe three months into working with T-SQL. At that point, I gleaned some useful information, but not much. I mean, using this text to, say, try to find out the proper way to word a CASE statement is kind of silly. But that's what I was trying to use the thing for, and it worked not well at all.

Thankfully, as a MS-SQL DBA, I was able to leave the high powered SQL to the developers and continue on in my lazy, GUI way. For a while. Eventually, I began learning more and more T-SQL through sheer osmosis - at some time in there I reached a tipping point, and realized that I'd probably amassed a bit more by way of T-SQL skills than I'd thought. And that was when I took another look at Henderson's book and realized how invaluable it actually was.

He makes the assumption that you now your way around a lot of the basic syntax, and instead focuses on the best strategies for making T-SQL do what you want it to, in the most efficient possible way. And that makes this text less than a how-to manual, and more of an amalgamation of hints and suggestions and possible tactics. Which, at this point in my developement, is pretty much just what I needed. I find myself paging through this book a couple times a day, and picking up something useful the majority of the times.

Downsides? Well, Henderson *is* a bit chatty. I happen to like that - this could be a deathly dry tome, and his good humor lightens the mood a bit. The thing isn't super organized, but given what it's trying to do, I don't much mind. And yeah, there's a coding error or three. That doesn't bug me much - I'm more interested in the overall strategies presented. But I suppose if you're thinking to pull some scripts over verbatim, you might have soem troubles.

Other than that, I'd heartily recommend this for intermediate T-SQL users and up.

Bought Ken Henderson's Guru's Guide to T-SQL, hoping to build on my (very) basic skills as a beginning developer. Looked very promising and I was really looking forward to working through it using the code in the book and on the enclosed CD. However, there is no cross-reference in the book to which files go with which code samples, resulting in a lot of hunting around to find the right files. And then, quite a few of the code samples simply won't run. Even with the corrections referred to in the Errata section on his website, I got many more errors than I can fix. Between trying to find the correct sql files from the cd, and trying to fix the errors, I've pretty much abandoned the book altogether. Not much use trying to learn from bad code. Wouldn't spend the money on this one, if I had to do it over.

This is a very fine book, and should be read cover-to-cover. It is not a reference book or a beginner's book but I think anyone can gain from reading it.

I would like to comment on some of the other reviews which "gush" with what reads like professionally-prepared reviews. I am very suspicious of such reviews and you should be too!

This is one of the books that after reading even couple of chapters you feel obligated to leave a feadback on.
This is the apotheosis of techinical writing. Serious, allways on the topic, never condesending or trying to insult your inteligence.
It is truely well-tempered writing; you go from page to page in somber and attentive procession.
This book should be included in ISO standards (if there were one for quality of books) as a stick for measuing other technical writing.
If you need a SQL book that is a little more mellow, but still a good reading, consider Vieira's book.
If you are still confused why 4 stars, it is because I hate perfection and also am envious of the guy's excelence.

This book gives invaluable insights into solving the non-trivial problems that we encounter in SQL that few books cover. An example is the books coverage of hierarchies. This type of data structure appears reasonably often in practice, but few books or courses cover querying hierarchies in SQL in an efficient manner. This book gives them the respect they deserve.

Other sticky topics include the ins and out of the SELECT statement, which is covered in depth. As well as an excellent section on triggers and transactions.

The transactions chapter is interesting because it is the only time the book goes into an introductory mode. Most of the book is at the expert level. No time is spent introducing the language or it's syntax. But the transaction chapter does spend some time on the basics.

There are some downsides. Some chapters are completely dominated by code with little explanatory text or annotations. And the book could have benefited from illustrations, any at all.

But the value of the book is in it's ability to pass on guru level techniques that will save you weeks of pain in routing out and fixing performance trouble spots. It's in this way that the book is worth every penny to the working SQL Server DBA or Engineer.

This book was my lifeline when I moved from Informix to Sql 2k. My shop recently moved all of our applications (about 15) from Informix to Sql 2k. We could not have done it without this book.

It builds on what you can find in the product documentation and teaches the many things you have to know to use Transact-Sql in real production systems. The product docs don't tell even half the story so a book like this is indespensible.

We bought 20 copies of this book when we first began researching our migration. Now that we're through we're adding some more team members so I am buying five more copies this afternoon. I would hate to think where our migration would have ended up without this great book.

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.

I just made the transistion from Oracle to SQL
Server about 3 months ago and I took up this book for a
starting point on the power of SQL Server. This book
is a great book for me and anyone making this kind of transition.

I have over ten years of experience in the database profession. Henderson's books are the best I have seen for any dbms. I bought all three of them around Christmas time and have been poring over them since then.

This book taught me how to write industrial strength programs for Sql Server. Who would have thought that the query language had this much power? The chapters on set operations, hiearchys and arrays showed me dozens of different ways of solving problems that I would have previously thought were unsolvable without pulling the data back to the client and working with it there. Being able to do all these things on the server makes applications simpler and faster.

The money I paid for this and Henderson's other books is the best money I have spent on computer books in a long, long time. Very highly recommended.

This is old version 7.0 material.

It's all command line driven ideas and magazine level tricks for using a query language like a real programming language, only it doesn't fly in production.

This book is for novices only. Any enterprise programmer would want to steer clear of this inaptly named book.

I give it two stars for the sharpening of t-sql query writing.
One can get caught up in real programming many times and miss the forest for the trees. This book does at least show times a query might work as well as real code.
2 stars.

The query performance chapter in this book is worth the price of the whole book. I have never seen such a collection of useful, practical Sql Server info and advise in one place. If you build or manage Sql Server for a living you owe it to yourself to read and practise this excellent book.