sjsubscribe (3/10/2008)
Well, good advice if you're dealing with one server and single schemas or need to optimize for in specific instances. But if you're writing procedures that need to run across many schemas, servers, and automatically pick the right tables without undue hard coding makes sense.For example, I have several lookup tables with the same names but with different data on different servers, schemas, and so on. But my stored procedures are the same across all machines. By not using dbo, I let the appropriate table get picked up at execution time. Price I pay is minimal compared to managing customized code for each server. To save compute cycles, fully qualified names could make a difference in certain circumstances, but to save programmer cycles, then the substitution model could be your friend.
Do you have difference lookup tables in the same database with different owners, or are they owned by dbo but in different databases/on different servers? If you need different results within the same database then the substitution method makes sense, but using the two-part name wouldn't impact the functionality you're looking for if the relevant tables are all owned by dbo in different databases.
Three part naming is obviously right out in your situation, but my understanding is that three part naming has no performance advantage to the more flexible two part naming.