I have to admit that I tend to use single character, sometimes 2 char aliases, but they have some bearing to the tables. For example, I might use
select *
from products p
inner join orderline oi
on p.productid = oi.productid
inner join orders o
on oi.orderid = o.orderid
inner join customers c
on o.custtid = c.custid
As mentioned above, the same tables appear often, so you get used to p for products.
ANSI syntax, while strange at first, is 1000 times better than the old syntax.
I always use non proportional or fixed width fonts as well and spaces instead of tabs so that the code looks the same on my machine as yours. And vice versa, which is usually the more important one 😀
Steve Jones
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/sjones
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