Simon Hughes - Software Architect, Tutor, Developer

In Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio, its handy to have some short cut keys to do common tasks. One handy one I always use is to " select top 100 * from " as I like to highlight a table name and press CTRL+4 to get the top 100 rows instantly. To set this up, go to Tools->Options->Keyboard. And type "select top 100 * from " without the quotes and making sure you add a space after the from. Very important to leave a space at the end. Highlight a table and press Ctrl+4 and the top 100 rows will be shown. SSMS will run your command and append the highlighted text. If your table is called USERS, it would run "select top 100 * from USERS". If you forgot to leave a space at the end, it would try and run "select top 100 * fromUSERS" which won't work.

Here is a multi-line statement (slow): CREATE FUNCTION dbo.fnSomeReport ( @someParam INT , @field_company_id INT = NULL ) RETURNS @result TABLE ( [field_company_name] VARCHAR (255), [engineer] VARCHAR (100), [sku] VARCHAR (30) ) AS BEGIN INSERT INTO @result ( [field_company_name], [engineer], [sku] ) SELECT field_company_name, engineer, sku FROM ... WHERE ID > someParam AND (@field_company_id IS NULL OR field_company_id = @field_company_id) RETURN END GO Now as an inline statement (fast) CREATE FUNCTION dbo.fnSomeReport ( @someParam INT , @field_company_id INT = NULL ) RETURNS TABLE AS RETURN ( SELECT field_company_name, engineer, sku FROM ... WHERE ID > someParam AND (@field_company_id IS NULL OR field_company_id = @field_company_id) ) GO Right then whats going on and what the hell is all the fuss about anyway? The query optimizer expands the function as if it was a macro, and generates the plan as if you had provided the expanded query . Thus, there is no performance cost ...