SSMS Tips and Tricks 3-4: The magical F1 key - help on syntax and metadata
Years ago, I used to always recommend that people install Books Online (BOL) on their systems. It’s ironic that it was called “Online”, given we’re really talking about “Offline”, but back when we first were talking about it, we were comparing it to a physical book, not to a live reference on a computer screen.
Nowadays though, I find that the version online is so far superior to the one that you can install locally, that I think it’s better to just use the online version. I particularly like the way that the online books are now cross-version ie: each page covers all supported versions, instead of having a separate page for each version.
2025-07-04