Back in April, I blogged about the ability to install Books Online locally with SQL Server 2014 – this wasn’t available initially, but was made possible a short time after release.
Except it wasn’t complete – a couple of segments of the documentation were missing from the download, most notably the Transact-SQL and XQuery references. This was reported in Connect #859047, and I’m happy to report that this content is now available. That said, you might have to go through a few hoops to get the content installed, as a simple “Check for updates online” did not work for me. It seemed to identify that new content was available:
But when I tried to install it, it froze at this point for a very long time (others have reported that this approach didn’t even get them this far):
So here’s a different approach that a colleague at Microsoft revealed this morning. Go to “Install content from online,” scroll down to SQL Server 2014, and click Add next to the “Microsoft SQL Server Language Reference” option, then click Update:
Now it will be downloading three packages instead of one:
Eventually this will finish, and voila, when you open the local help, these references will now be available (though you may have to click the “Sync TOC” button on the toolbar to see them):
Aaron (@AaronBertrand) is a Data Platform MVP with industry experience dating back to Classic ASP and SQL Server 6.5. He is editor-in-chief of the performance-related blog, SQLPerformance.com.
Aaron’s blog focuses on T-SQL bad habits and best practices, as well as coverage of updates and new features in Plan Explorer, SentryOne, and SQL Server.