Aspin Adam - Querying SQL Server

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First published: July 2022

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Adam Aspin is an independent Business Intelligence (BI) consultant based in the United Kingdom. He has worked with SQL Server for over 25 years. During this time, he has developed several dozen database and analytical systems based on Microsoft databases. He has applied his skills for a range of clients in industry sectors across finance, utilities, pharmaceuticals, telecoms, insurance, retail, and luxury goods.

A graduate of Oxford University, Adam moved into IT early in his career. Databases soon became a passion, and his experience in this arena ranges from dBase to Oracle, and Access to MySQL, with occasional sorties into the world of DB2, Informix, and PostgreSQL. He is, however, most at home in the Microsoft universe developing applications with SQL Server, SQL Server Analysis Services, SQL Server Reporting Services, SQL Server Integration Services, and Power BI.

Adam is a frequent contributor to SQLServerCentral.com and Simple Talk. He is a regular speaker at SQL Server User Groups, SQL Saturdays, Power BI Meetups and conferences such as SQL Bits. He has written numerous articles for various French IT publications. A fluent French speaker, Adam has worked in France and Switzerland for many years.

He is the author of SQL Server 2012 Data Integration Recipes (Apress, 2012), High Impact Data Visualization in Excel with Power View, 3D Maps, Get & Transform and Power BI, Second Edition (Apress, 2016), Business Intelligence with SQL Server Reporting Services (Apress, 2015), and Pro Power BI Desktop, Third Edition (Apress, 2019) and Pro Pro Power BI Theme Creation (Apress 2021).

Sandra Eaton grew up in Birmingham, UK. After an initial career as a civil servant, Sandra took a short break to raise a family, which then turned into a long career break and a wonderful family.

While bringing up two children, Sandra gained a First Class Honors degree from the Open University. She also qualified as an ISEB software tester. She currently applies her skills testing a range of software from PC applications to ERP implementationsand anything in between.

Currently based in Telford, UK, in her spare time Sandra can usually be found walking the Shropshire hills or wild camping in the mountains of North Wales.

Writing a technical book is an arduous project at the best of times. Fortunately, I was lucky to have help and support from a great team.

First, I owe a deep debt of gratitude to Sandra Eaton, who kindly accepted my offer to be the technical reviewer of this book. Sandra brought a wealth of experience to this role, and her training as a software tester shone in the way that she helped me ensure that the code worked exactly as it was intended. Sandra went far beyond the call of duty in her efforts to help me deliver a book that would help readers master SQL.

Finally I we have to thank the production staff at BPB for all their help. Their professionalism in guiding me through the publication process was much appreciated.

Lastbut not leastI need to thank my wife and son for putting up with my obsession with writing a book on a subject like SQL. Their good humor and encouragement have helped me considerably on this particular journey.

If you are looking at this book, it is probably because you have some basic SQL (Structured Query Language) querying knowledge and you want to raise your game and push your skillset to a higher level.

Whatever the motivation, you know that you want to build on your existing knowledge and use it to learn how to deliver the data analysis that you need. This probably means learning how to slice and filter the data in Microsoft SQL Server, as well as ensuring that you can tweak the presentation and present your results clearly and cogently.

This book is the next step on your journey. It aims to teach you in-depth SQL querying using data stored in a SQL Server database. It presumes that you have some previous knowledge of SQL and SQL Server and is designed to take you beyond the core concepts so that you are empowered to write powerful, polished, and efficient SQL queries that deliver real insight.

SQL Server is one of the worlds bestselling and most widely used databases. It follows that learning the Microsoft flavor of SQL (called T-SQL) and the basics of the Microsoft database has the potential to be a career-enhancing move. As the data store for innumerable corporate, commercial, and web-driven databases, this mature and impressive system is used to power data analysis across the globe.

Every database has its own flavor of SQL, and these variants are subtly different. Microsoft uses its own dialect of SQL called T-SQL. Although the core elements are the same as those found in other databases, there are many subtle differences between T-SQL and other flavors.

This means that learning just plain vanilla SQL will soon leave you struggling with queries that use SQL Server. It can also mean that you will find yourself unable to extract the deeper insights that mastering T-SQL on SQL Server can provide.