TomThomson (10/15/2014)

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As many have already pointed out, the "correct" answer is bunk. There will be a syntax error because "column" is a reserved word. So the only option...

I'm amazed at the level of acceptance of sloppy, untested code here. Yes, it was only a test, and no, there was no real jeopardy. But it was...

Stewart "Arturius" Campbell (10/15/2014)

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Enough nitpicking.

yes, the question used a reserved keyword for a column name (purely by mishap, i'm sure).

but, despite that little inconvenience, the idea behind the question was...

Koen Verbeeck (10/15/2014)

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paul.knibbs (10/15/2014)

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Maybe the author chose the column name deliberately to catch out people who just run the SQL rather than thinking about their answer? I mean, the error...

Msg 156, Level 15, State 1, Procedure my_sp, Line 2

Incorrect syntax near the keyword 'FROM'.

Oops.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor (9/29/2014)

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I'm with Jeff. If I had

...at some point I'd do this:

SELECT

CustomerID

,Name

,Address

...

FROM

Customer

...

Thanks Jeff. I'll ponder and see if I prefer your way to my way. As someone once remarked, for each expert there's an equal and opposite expert (not...

Jeff Moden (9/29/2014)

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Heh... I'm interested to know how or why you came up with this coding standard of generally avoiding aliases. I did my degree in the school of...

Hugo Kornelis (9/26/2014)

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... my personal coding standard is to always use aliases for all tables in queries that use two or more tables, but use no alias in single-query tables...

Except that I would write

SELECT

FirstName,

Surname,

Address,

EmailAddress

FROM

Person

As you say, it's all preference. For simple queries such...

Far be it from me to disagree with a guru of your stature, but personally I find aliasing makes queries difficult to read. I only ever alias where strictly...

Can you explain why you aliased the sys.syscolumns table?

SELECT TOP 10

RAND( ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY id))

FROM sys.syscolumns

is functionally identical, as far as I am aware.