Can someone please identify the functional/performance differences, if any, between SET
and SELECT
in T-SQL? Under what conditions should I choose one over the other?
UPDATE:
Thanks to all who responded. As a few people pointed out, this article by Narayana Vyas Kondreddi has lots of good info. I also perused the net after reading the article and found this condensed version by Ryan Farley which offers the highlights and thought I would share them:
- SET is the ANSI standard for
variable assignment, SELECT is not.
- SET can only assign one variable at
a time, SELECT can make multiple
assignments at once.
- If assigning from a query, SET can
only assign a scalar value. If the
query returns multiple values/rows
then SET will raise an error. SELECT
will assign one of the values to the
variable and hide the fact that
multiple values were returned (so
you'd likely never know why
something was going wrong elsewhere - have fun troubleshooting that one)
- When assigning from a query if there
is no value returned then SET will
assign NULL, where SELECT will not
make the assignment at all (so the
variable will not be changed from
it's previous value)
- As far as speed differences - there
are no direct differences between
SET and SELECT. However SELECT's
ability to make multiple assignments
in one shot does give it a slight
speed advantage over SET.
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