What is the difference between ; and GO in stored procedure in SQL Server?

Question

What is the difference between ; and GO in stored procedure in SQL Server ?

Actually, if I have a stored procedure in SQL server and wanna to put t separate queries inside it which the first one just calculates number of records (count) and the second one selects some records based on some conditions, then what should I use between that two queries?

Go or ;

Answer 1

; just ends the statement.

GO is not a statement but a command to the server to commit the current batch to the Database. It creates a stop inside the transaction.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms188037.aspx

(Update, thanks for the comments):
GO is a statement intended for the Management studio as far as I know, maybe to other tools as well.

Answer 2

The semicolon separates queries, the GO command separates batches. (Also GO is not a T-SQL command, it's a command recognised by the sqlcmd and osql utilities and Management Studio.)

You can't use GO inside a stored procedure. If you would try, the definition of the procedure will end there, and the rest will be a separate batch.

A local variable has the scope of the batch, so after a GO command you can't use local variables declared before the GO command:

declare @test int  set @test = 42  GO  select @Test -- causes an error message as @Test is undefined