What you need to get the job done. The latest book from the best-selling SQL Server author Mike Hotek. SQL Server 2012 Data Design and Retrieval is your reference for building databases and querying data. I no longer have a publisher making me stay away from all of the advanced topics. If you bought one of my prior books and quickly found yourself outgrowing it, this one is MUCH different. SQL Server professionals of all levels will find something in this book which will impact the way you design databases and manage data. This is the most in-depth book I have ever written on SQL Server. This book takes you on a tour from the basics through the advanced details delivering a reference which you can employ in solving the real-world problems faced every day by database professionals. Each topic is reinforced with detailed exercises taken from real customer implementations. All of the content is updated for SQL Server 2012 SP1 and includes the new features which were introduced. Each topic starts with the basics, giving beginners a good starting point, and then drills down to the advanced details which will interest even the most seasoned SQL Server professionals. This book is also a great starting point for the 70-461 Querying Microsoft SQL Server 2012 certification exam. I believe in learning the material for your job and using an exam to verify mastery. If you are simply looking for a cookbook to pass an exam, this isn't the book for you. If you want to really learn SQL Server and be able to apply it to your job, you've found the right book. We start with a brief overview of SQL Server and walk you through getting everything you need for the examples installed. Once installed, the structure of a database is covered including details on FILESTREAM storage and how it works in SQL Server 2012. After getting through the pre-requisites, Chapter 5 becomes the launch point for a tour de force through designing, mainpulating, and querying data. You will get a very detailed discussion of all of the data types and specifically when and how to use them with examples that show you why a FLOAT is actually more accurate than a DECIMAL. Mike also explains, how to REALLY design a database without all of the baffling technobabble. Once we have some tables, we dive into a detailed discussion of the on-disk storage mechanisms, how a row is actually stored, and how to compute the real space consumption. You learn all of the ins and outs of manipulating data, including how to manipulate trees and subtrees within a hierarchy. The concurrency chapter provides an in-depth view into everything having to do with transaction management. If that wasn't enough, we then take you through basic, intermediate, and advanced querying applying everything that you could think of doing with a SELECT statement, inlcuding 20+ pages on window functions and querying XML on the way to a deep dive into spatial data. After finding out how to write a SELECT statement to find the nearest Starbucks, we finish off the book with a 150+ page dissertation on SQL Server indexes. You'll drill through every component of every type of index, including an explanation of how statistics are actually built with some examples on how the stats can have a completely unexpected effect on your query plans. The book finishing not just with partitioning but a real world implementation which very few DBAs even know how to do on the way to explaining just why something as simple as the nullability of a column can double the number of processor cycles your queries require.