2012 Books Online (or lack thereof)

  • From what I can tell, the Books Online that we're all used to no longer exists in SQL 2012 RTM. Instead you open Help in SSMS, or in the other SQL tools, and you're taken to the online documentation at MSDN. That's fine I guess but I don't like the search interface. In pre-2012 you begin typing a topic under Look For and matching topics appear as you type. Now it seems you are searching all of MSDN for relevant articles. We'll probably get used to that but so far I'm not sure I like it.

    Any other thoughts?

  • Like the way they're going with the BOL here (using Help Viewer 1.1), and seem to be trying to unify the help across products.

    You can download them to have locally too.

    Probably take a bit of time to get used to, but then I was never much of a fan of BOL for 2008 anyway 😀

  • Not much to add to this except to say that I quite like what MS have done with BOL; very much like Visual Studio.

    :exclamation: "Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience." :exclamation:

  • Hi,

    You can go to the following site to download BOL for SQL 2012:

    http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=347

    This is an offline installation copy which you can keep. Keep in mind however that as information updates on the online version, those updates won't reflect on downloaded versions. This you need to manually update using Help Viewer.

    Navigating the online version of BOL is easier with the following link:

    http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms130214%5Bb%5D(v=sql.100)%5B/b%5D.aspx

    In the above link, take note of (v=sql.100).

    Changing this particular number will go to the relevant BOL as follows:

    v=sql.90 - SQL 2005

    v=sql.100 - SQL 2008

    v=sql.105 - SQL 2008 R2

    V=sql.110 - SQL 2012

    This however does not work for SQL Server 2000, when you try 80 it will actually default back to SQL 2012 BOL.

  • Thanks for posting the link to the downloadable version. I was planning to hunt for that, and I just ran across your post. 🙂

  • if you go into the new help dialog and click updates you will be presented with a list of help topics to download including BOL

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    "Ya can't make an omelette without breaking just a few eggs" 😉

  • Perry Whittle (4/18/2012)


    if you go into the new help dialog and click updates you will be presented with a list of help topics to download including BOL

    Just was getting to saying this. 😉

    Simply said, Microsoft switched the default help from Local to Web, but you can still download the whole shebang (2.2 GB) but then you have to check for updates yoursef; MS Update will not do it for you.

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