I recently grabbed this long time technical favorite off of my shelf to look up some reference information. Once again I was pleased at how well this technical book was written and quickly was reviewing other things I had not thought of. While there are many references to older versions of SQL Server, the code still holds strong and will be of benefit to novices and advanced users.
This was the book I liked best when I just started with SQL (or TSQL) in mid 2012. It is old though, with syntax mainly in version 2000 or 2005. But it gives smart ideas about how to use TSQL to do different sorts of things. Also, it’s a hard book to read, so it’s worth revisiting from time to time (I’m still doing that now).