T-SQL : Bad Habits and Best Practices

Whether you are a developer, DBA, or anything in between, chances are you are not always following best practices when you write T-SQL. Unfortunately, many so-called “bad habits” aren’t always obvious, but can lead to poor performance, maintainability issues, and compatibility problems.

In this session, you will learn about several bad habits, how they develop, and how you can avoid them. While we will briefly discuss advice you’ve probably heard before, like avoid SELECT * and don’t use NOLOCK, you will also learn some subtleties in SQL Server that might surprise you, how some shorthand can bite you in the long run, and a very easy way to improve cursor performance.

By changing your techniques and ditching some of these bad habits for best practices, you will take new techniques back to your environment that will lead to more efficient code, a more productive workflow, or both.