Steve Jones - Editor (3/12/2009)
If you want to run it in SSMS and get the answer, that's up to you. However that kind of defeats the purpose of the questions. You should make an attempt to answer the question without running it.Think about it, if someone asked you this in an interview, would you answer it or say, "I can't do it without SSMS?"
FWIW, I do not think that questions of the form "What would you get if you ran this in SSMS" are the best choice, either here or in an interview.
In fact I would never ask a question like that in an interview unless I wanted them to say "Try it and see." I already have a resource that can tell me that both faster and more accurately: SSMS.
Now a much more useful question form, both in interviews and for SSC (IMHO), is "When I run this in SSMS, I get this. WHY?" You just have to make sure that there is a definitive and deterministic answer (which admittedly takes some work to get right).
[font="Times New Roman"]-- RBarryYoung[/font], [font="Times New Roman"] (302)375-0451[/font] blog: MovingSQL.com, Twitter: @RBarryYoung[font="Arial Black"]
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