How do I return an empty result set from a procedure using T-SQL?

Question

I'm interested in returning an empty result set from SQL Server stored procedures in certain events.

The intended behaviour is that a L2SQL DataContext.SPName().SingleOrDefault() will result in CLR null value.

I'm presently using the following solution, but I'm unsure whether it would be considered bad practice, a performance hazard (I could not find one by reading the execution plan), or if there is simply a better way:

SELECT * FROM [dbo].[TableName] WHERE 0 = 1; 

The execution plan is a constant scan with a trivial cost associated with it.

The reason I am asking this instead of simply not running any SELECTs is because I'm concerned previous SELECT @scalar or SELECT INTO statements could cause unintended result sets to be served back to L2SQL. Am I worrying over nothing?

Answer 1

If you need column names in the response then proceed with the select TOP 0 * from that table, otherwise just use SELECT TOP 0 NULL. It should work pretty fast :)