A couple of weeks ago my latest book – Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2008: T-SQL Programming was sent to the printers and should be available on the shelves as of September 16, 2009. The contributors to this book besides me are: Dejan Sarka, Roger Wolter, Greg Low, Ed Katibah and Isaac Kunen who authored chapters, Steve Kass who did the technical editing and far beyond, and Lubor Kollar who wrote the foreword. I’m grateful for having had the opportunity to work with this group of knowledgeable people—both at the professional and personal levels.
For those who haven’t read the 2005 edition of the book and are not familiar with it at all, this book is the second volume of a two-part series about advanced T-SQL. The first is Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2008: T-SQL Querying, and should be read first. T-SQL Querying focuses on querying and query tuning. T-SQL Programming focuses on programmatic constructs and assumes you have solid knowledge of querying and query tuning. You can find details about both books here.
Note that both T-SQL Querying and T-SQL Programming are advanced books and are not intended for beginners. If you just started learning T-SQL, I’d recommended starting with Microsoft SQL Server 2008: T-SQL Fundamentals.
Back to T-SQL Programming, if you’ve read the 2005 edition of the book, you will find plenty of new stuff in the 2008 edition. Naturally existing chapters were enhanced to cover the new features in SQL Server 2008, plus several completely new chapters were added (see companion website for details).
I can’t tell you what a relief it is to have this book done; this is the third and last of three books I wrote about SQL Server 2008, and I’ve been writing nonstop since January 1st, 2008 till now. Finally, I can start doing some reading. ;)
BTW, on the morning of January 6th 2008 I stopped smoking, so I think of these three books as “smoke free” books. :)
Cheers, and happy programming!
BG