Ask HN: Learning resources for MS SQL Server?

I'm trying to move from an Access+VBA setup to MS SQL Server at work. I have some very basic half-baked knowledge of SQL and find myself spending a lot of time searching through the help files for trivial things.

Could you recommend any good beginner's tutorials and learning resources? I intend to write a reasonably large app (calculating road traffic emissions for London) over the next couple of months.

I am also beginning to use some R for statistical analysis; so some pointers on using R and SQL together would be useful too. Thanks.