Simple question:
Is "SELECT * FROM Table WITH (NOLOCK)" exactly equivalent to "SELECT * FROM Table (NOLOCK)" - in other words, is the "WITH" required for a hint? The documentation is sufficiently unclear for me to determine this and a DBA is telling me that the second form is locking tables and I don't believe it because if it is locking what the heck does TSQL think the "(NOLOCK)" is in the second form?