Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Bible

✍ Scribed by Paul Nielsen, Uttam Parui, Mike White

• Publisher: Wiley Pub., Inc
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 1683
• Edition: 1st ed
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

I have the two previous editions (2000 and 2005).
This one is heavier than the other two - 1642 pages compared to 1293 and 890.
And the paper stock is better as well.
The tone is almost conversational in that Paul Nielsen comes up with likely scenarios to show the syntax of a command.
You can tell that a lot of his tips come from hindsight. Here's an example of a Best Practice tip found on page 263: "Use a join to pull data from two data sources that can be filtered or manipulated as a whole after the join. If the data must be manipulated prior to the join, then use a derived table subquery."

That piece of advice comes from someone who has had to tackle problems using both techniques.

And he's not afraid to tell you worst practices either. Page 547: "Any table design that requires sparse columns is a horrible design."
This is especially helpful if you're learning a new feature and want to know if it's worth the effort.

Don't think that this is an A-Z reference manual.
Chapter 53 is Mr. Nielsen's "AutoAudit", which is quite a nifty code generator to add auditing to your tables.