Inside Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008: T-SQL Querying

Foreword

I had met Itzik Ben-Gan briefly a couple of times and knew of his reputation, so I was looking forward to his afternoon session on avoiding cursors in SQL programming at PASS. I was lucky to get there early, as the large room filled up quickly. Itzik took a couple of SQL programming problems and diced them up in the most skillful and entertaining way, showing the elegance and efficiency of set-oriented thinking. The audience loved it—and so did I, except I had a different angle. Having worked on the internals of SQL Server, I could see Itzik touch the product nerves in his demos, and I admired how he turned features into beautiful solutions. After the session, I asked one of the attendees what had been his main takeaway, curious about ...