This is an AWSOME book!

Written by Itzik Ben-Gan and coauthored by Lubor Kolar and Dejan Sarka it's definitly worth it's money.

It starts with the chapter on logical query processing in which it explaines the basics of the full select statement and the order of processing it.

Just basic stuff.

Chapter 2 covers the phyisical query processing. Explaines what parsing, algebratization and executions plans are and how it's all tied together.

Chapter 3 covers the query tuning methodology and tools to use for it. In my opinion This chapter is one of the best in the book.

Chapter 4 introduces us to subqueries, CTE's and Rank functions.

Chapter 5 talks about joins and set operations like INTERSECT, EXCEPT and UNION.

Chapter 6 is about Aggregation and Pivoting. This is one of the 3 best chapters in the book.

Chapter 7 covers Top and Apply operators.

Chapter 8 talks about data modification: Insert, delete and update statements.

Chapter 9 brings us Graphs, Trees, Hierarchies and Recursion. It's all covered in great detail and uses new SQL Server features to accomplish the goals.

This one is also in the Top 3 chapters in the book along side Chapters 3 and 6.

There's also an appendix that holds interesting logic puzzles whic can be a lot of fun to play with.

For me reading this book was a very special experience. Why? Because i learned at least 1 new thing per 5-10 pages.

And in my opinion THAT makes a book GREAT!

I recommend this one to every sql developer out there. Simply because it's handy and a great reference to have.

And if for nothing else just for chapters 3, 6 and 9. Simply awsome.

Amazon link here.