I discovered this book when I was in the middle of writing a Sales Order Processing application using Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 and Microsoft Visual Basic 6. I scanned through the wealth of material in this book and I was able to adapt many of the techniques to the Sales Order application. The book applies to SQL Server 7.0 and SQL Server 2000. It is aimed primarily at developers as opposed to those performing solely administrative tasks.
It contains 20 chapters in just over 800 pages dealing with programming issues like Referential Integrity with Cascading Actions, Views, Stored Procedures, Triggers, Partitioning data using Views, Cursors etc. This book is not a rehash of the SQL Server Books OnLine. There are also 7 appendices in the book. One deals with Analyzing Query Performance, another with 'Dynamically Creating Triggers for Cascade Actions' and a 'References' appendix that is littered with good places to obtain more information about SQL Server.
There are a number of extra useful facilities. For example many chapters have a 'From the Trenches' section that provide snippets of information about situations taken from real-world projects. There are also a number of 'Best Practices' sections where the authors make usage statements based on their knowledge of SQL Server. I benefited specifically from the 'Tips and Tricks' chapter made up of submissions by people solving specific real-world problems. I certainly didn't know that it was possible to use a Case statement as part of a Join in the way it is used in one of the examples.
The book also contains a number of puzzles at the end of each chapter. I was deeply involved with the Sales Order Processing Application project and felt I was 'too busy' to study them. But that was a mistake for me. I took some time off work and during that time found that the puzzle solutions offered me the opportunity to apply T-SQL to my application as opposed to just learning/reading the mechanics of T-SQL.
If you want to broaden your horizons read and attempt the solutions to these puzzles. The actual solutions to the puzzles are provided in a separate chapter.
Some of these puzzles require mental gymnastics but then that is why the book has the word 'Advanced' in its title!
