timothyawiseman (12/6/2008)

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Jeff Moden (12/6/2008)

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timothyawiseman (12/5/2008)

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To slightly modify a quote from Larry Wall, "SQL is designed to give you several ways to do anything, so consider picking the most readable one."

I'm definitely for that and glad to see anyone concerned about readability for a change... but even CTE's won't make readable code without a bit of concern for formatting and commenting. Heh... I had one guy at my previous job that thought it was a good formatting choice to write each query on a single line and all lower case.

You have a point. But, in my opinion, a well formatted CTE will be easier to read and understand than even a well formatted derived table inside some other portion of the command.