How do I return ALL columns in one table and just a few in another using join?

Question

I would rather not have to list all columns in tableA The '*' works for one table, but I don't want to get back all columns in tableB from JOIN. Reason being, these records are being deleted, and I want to store data from tableA (only) as serialized xml for period of time.

Answer 1

select tableA.*, tableB.col1, tableB.col2, ...

Answer 2

It is a poor practice to ever use select * or select table1.*. It is bad for maintenance and performance both. You should never do that in production code.

Just use the column names that you want.