I am going to hijack this thread :) Does anyone have any T-SQL 2005 book that they would like to recommend?

>Hi, Eric,
>
>I've been doing some presentations at CodeCamps and .NET user groups lately on new features in T-SQL 2005 (I actually combine it with new features in ADO.NET 2.0)
>
>In a nutshell, the main new features are:
>
>- PIVOT/UNPIVOT (really cool....don't need to use in-line CASE statements as often)
>- New APPLY operator to specify a table-valued UDF in a FROM clause
>- TOP clause....you can specify a variable in the TOP clause for queries and INSERT/UPDATE statements
>- Common Table Expressions to create recursive queries (also really cool)
>- New Data types ( Varchar(Max), VarBinary(Max), XML)
>- Try....catch
>- DDL Triggers
>- New OUTPUT clause on an INSERT/UPDATE statement, to avoid a roundtrip back to the server on what was changed
>
>(And the new ranking functions you mentioned in your link)
>
>
>Also, Jim Duffy wrote a good article in CoDe magazine on new features in T-SQL 2005:
>
>http://www.code-magazine.com/Article.aspx?quickid=0501041
>
>Hope that helps...
>Kevin