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.
SET and SELECT may be used to assign values to variables through T-SQL. Both fulfill the task, but in some scenarios unexpected results may be produced. In this tip I elaborate on the considerations for choosing between the SET and SELECT methods for assigning a value to variable.
The SET command is used with UPDATE to specify which columns and values that should be updated in a table.
To recall, SQL Server SET options are a group of session-level options that control how the SQL Server behaves on the database session level, and the option value can be changed using the SET T-SQL command for the current session that you execute the SET command on.
SET is the ANSI standard way of assigning values to variables, and SELECT is not. But you can use SELECT to assign values to more than one variable at a time. SET allows you to assign data to only one variable at a time. So that in performance is where SELECT will be a winner.
For more detail and examples refer to: Difference between SET and SELECT when assigning values to variables
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