I'm having to do some integration with an app based on MS SQL Server. It's a bit odd, but I just ran into my first real "WTF". I'm going to put this in its own paragraph so it stands out:

MS SQL Server has no LIMIT clause.

Yeah, so much for selecting a small sample at the CLI. Here's the suggested workaround:

SELECT * FROM (
  SELECT *, ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY name) AS row
  FROM sys.databases ) a
WHERE row > 5 and row <= 10

This is touted as "[t]he good news is that SQL Server 2005 makes this really easy". I guess they accidentally typed "easy" when what they really meant was "stupidly complicated".

[EDIT] No booleans either. Use char(1) and put 't' or 'f' in it they say. It's good to see Microsoft sucks on the backend as well as they do the desktop.