Wrox - Bonus Reference TransactSQL

Most database management systems include extensions, which enhance SQL and make it behave more like a programming language. SQL Server provides a set of statements known as Transact-SQL (T-SQL). T-SQL recognizes statements that fetch rows from one or more tables, flow-control statements like IF…ELSE and WHILE, and numerous functions to manipulate strings, numeric values, and dates, similar to Visual Basic’s functions. With T-SQL you can do everything that can be done with SQL, as well as program these operations. At the very least, you can attach lengthy SQL statements to a database as stored procedures, so that you can call them by name. In addition, you can use parameters, so that the same procedure can act on different data.