If you’re new to SQL Server and want a clear, structured way into T-SQL, this free book by Gregory A. Larsen takes you from your first SELECT statement through joins, sorting, grouping, and the INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE statements you’ll use every day.
Written for beginners but thorough enough to fill in gaps for anyone who picked up T-SQL on the job rather than from a course.
This book is still accurate in 2026
The T-SQL fundamentals in this book — SELECT, JOIN, WHERE, GROUP BY, ORDER BY, and the core INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE statements — work exactly the same way in SQL Server 2025 and Azure SQL as they did when this book was written.
Free eBook download (PDF): Download here
What’s covered in this book?
- The basic
SELECTstatement, and how to build aWHEREclause - A short history of SQL and SQL Server, from IBM’s original research to today
- How to translate a relational model into real SQL Server tables, keys, and constraints
- Set theory made practical:
INTERSECT,UNION,EXCEPT, and how they relate to joins INNER JOINandOUTER JOIN, explained with Venn diagrams and worked examples- Sorting data with
ORDER BY, including collation and case-sensitivity gotchas - Logical operators:
BETWEEN,LIKE,IN, and where each one trips people up - Scalar functions, and the categories they fall into
- Summarizing data with
GROUP BY,ROLLUP,CUBE, andGROUPING SETS
- Adding, changing, and deleting data with
INSERT,UPDATE, andDELETE
About the author
Greg Larsen has worked in the computer industry since 1980 and became a SQL Server DBA in 1999. He’s written hundreds of articles on SQL Server, spent years running a PASS user group and co-leading SQL Saturday events, and now teaches SQL Server as an adjunct professor. This book distills that hands-on teaching experience into a step-by-step introduction to T-SQL.
Click here to download the book (PDF) for free
Additional resources
Once you’ve finished the book, return to Simple Talk for more T-SQL and SQL Server learning, including:
Fast, reliable and consistent SQL Server development…
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