"Entry level" and "Internals" don't usually go together. Start with the basics (and there are many, many good books, go browse at Amazon and pick up a couple) and practice...

jasona.work (8/5/2015)

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GilaMonster (8/5/2015)

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Snippets and a whole pile of script files saved in DropBox and on a creditcard-shaped flash drive (which I need to update).

And to get back on topic:

"What book...

Snippets and a whole pile of script files saved in DropBox and on a creditcard-shaped flash drive (which I need to update).

And to get back on topic:

"What book do I...

As is, it's impossible to answer.

Answering the question requires at minimum the query that the function is to be used with.

Restore they backed up primary and the archive filegroups as a new database, then if you need the data in the original database, copy it across.

Thinking about it some more,...

Please post the deadlock graph, the table definitions and the update statements.

Depends on how the query is run, can't answer that by looking at the function alone

All of them, and at least 5 years.

Seriously, there's no one book that's going to make you an expert. Read everything you can get your hands on. Test everything out...

Cases where it's acceptable to reinstall the server if the upgrade fails.

Well, yes. It'll be a stock, standard CREATE TABLE statement. As I said, you can't create the table from the execution of the procedure. You'll need to create the table...

There's no easy way, and to be honest the hard way is not worth doing. Most people just use a value larger than 5. Some say 20, some say 30,...

Backups don't take locks and aren't affected in any way by locks held by user queries.

Backup time is a factor of read time (IO throughput on the database files) and...

You can't create the table with the execution of a proc. You'll need to first CREATE TABLE, and then INSERT INTO ... EXEC...

You can't do that exactly. Best bet would probably be something like:

Take a backup of the primary filegroup and the archive filegroups (you need primary), put that backup onto archive...

Start with Itzik Ben-Gan's book T-SQL Fundamentals. It's not a performance tuning book, but it'll give you a good grounding in writing T-SQL properly.