That's because SQL Server and it's Father, SyBase, both use T-SQL and is the only dialect of SQL that I personally know of that allows the use of a FROM clause in UPDATE, which works very much like a FROM clause in a SELECT. Of course, it has some of the same caveats so you need to pay attention to how you write the code but it's incredibly powerful and, as you noticed, is more simpler to write in most cases.