What is the meaning of this operator: *=
Your query is using the pre-ANSI (and possibly original) JOIN syntax. Back in "the day", joining tables was done by specifying all of the tables, separated by commas, in the FROM clause, and then specifying the join condition(s) in the WHERE clause. Equating the current ANSI style with the old style gives you the following chart of options:


[INNER] JOIN: TableA.Field = TableB.Field  
LEFT [OUTER] JOIN: TableA.Field *= TableB.Field  
RIGHT [OUTER] JOIN: TableA.Field =* TableB.Field  
 FULL [OUTER] JOIN: TableA.Field *=* TableB.Field  
CROSS JOIN: {nothing specified to relate the two tables}  


The pre-ANSI syntax is / was supported (sometimes with slight variation) by the various RDBMSes. However, it has been deprecated for a while in Microsoft SQL Server, and was officially removed in SQL Server 2012 (as you are now seeing). This was noted in the Discontinued Database Engine Functionality in SQL Server 2012 MSDN page (2nd to last row in the grid).

In your query, you have 3 tables:

FROM survey,assay,geology


and two LEFT JOIN conditions:

AND survey.hole *= assay.hole
AND survey.hole *= geology.hole


But yes, you can rewrite it as follows:

SELECT sy.hole, survey_date, pit, cu, rec, zn, mn, north, east, elevation,
       rtrim(min_type) AS [min_type], rtrim(rock_type) AS [rock_type],
       rtrim(alt_type) AS [alt_type], rtrim(min_style) AS [min_style]
FROM survey sy
LEFT JOIN assay ay
       ON ay.hole = sy.hole
LEFT JOIN geology gy
       ON gy.hole = sy.hole
WHERE  mined_out IS NULL
AND pit = (SELECT fmpit FROM tyrctl WHERE source = 'export by date')
AND (
      survey_date &gt;= (SELECT fmdate FROM tyrctl WHERE source = 'export by date')
  AND survey_date &lt;= (SELECT todate FROM tyrctl WHERE source = 'export by date')
    )


Technically, you don't need the parenthesis around the two survey_date conditions in the WHERE clause as they are all AND conditions, but if you prefer it for readability then it is fine.



As @ypercube pointed out in a comment on this answer, the query can be further simplified to since the 3 subqueries in the WHERE clause all reference the same row of the same table. So that could look at follows:

SELECT sy.hole, survey_date, pit, cu, rec, zn, mn, north, east, elevation,
       rtrim(min_type) AS [min_type], rtrim(rock_type) AS [rock_type],
       rtrim(alt_type) AS [alt_type], rtrim(min_style) AS [min_style]
FROM survey sy
INNER JOIN tyrctl tl
        ON sy.survey_date &gt;= tl.fmdate
       AND sy.survey_date &lt;= tl.todate
       AND sy.pit = tl.fmpit
       AND tl.source = 'export by date'
LEFT JOIN assay ay
       ON ay.hole = sy.hole
LEFT JOIN geology gy
       ON gy.hole = sy.hole
WHERE  mined_out IS NULL;