Microsoft's SQL Server 2000 Books Online
has been, probably, the most useful--under utilized--reference for most
things SQL Server. Now it doesn't cover everything, it won't
discuss the pro's and con's of adjacency sets vs directed graph/nested
set approach to hierarchical data storage. It will give you
details on cast and convert, sp_addlogin or any of the other system
stored procedures.
In 2004 thing came out with an update to
Books Online (and service pack 3a-ish, they're at service pack 4 btw),
if you haven't updated by now, you ought to.
The point of this
post? The 2004 Books Online updated download was something in the
neighborhood of 32MB or so, I was checking on some requirements for Yukon SQL Server 2005 and found Books Online
for it and went to download. I was astonished to see it was
113MB. Maybe I shouldn't have been so astonished with everything
new; notification services, sql clr, the new interface replacing
Enterprise Manager... I guess the take away is, damn, that's a
lot to learn.