SELECT…INTO is a useful shortcut for development work, especially for creating temporary tables. However, it no longer has a clear performance advantage and should be avoided in production code. It is better to use a CREATE TABLE statement, where you can specify constraints and datatypes in advance, making it less likely that inconsistencies will... Read more
A strategic view of how a development team can use SQL Prompt to establish and share coding standards, through code analysis rules, formatting styles and code snippets. Read more
Phil Factor explains why you should prefer use of EXISTS over IN, when comparing data sets using a subquery. While there is no longer any significant performance advantage, using NOT EXISTS will avoid unexpected results when the subquery’s source data contains NULL values. Read more
The incorrect use of a scalar UDF as a global database constant is a major performance problem and should be investigated whenever SQL Prompt spots this in any production code. Unless you need to use these global constants in computed columns or constraints, it is generally safer and more convenient to store the value... Read more