Posted by David Portas on 02/14/06 13:31

Shwetabh wrote:
>
> But the problem is that this database has to be accessed by a third
> party
> application which will need to access the required data using Partnum
> as
> keyword. In such scenario, it becomes neccessary to use select * from
> ...
> to get the row. How can I help it in such a case?
> Also, will it be inefficient to use select * from .. if we have to
> retrieve just 1
> record or is it inefficient if more records have to be retrieved?

Why would it be necessary to use SELECT * in such a scenario? SELECT *
is slow because it requires extra work by the server to retrieve the
column metadata. It's unreliable because more code may break if and
when the table structure changes. It's hard to maintain because you
can't easily search for column dependencies in your code during
development.

In another post you stated your application was VB so you should be
able to create a stored procedure and call that from your VB code.
Again, it's poor practice to put SQL code directly into applications if
you can possibly avoid it.

--
David Portas, SQL Server MVP

Whenever possible please post enough code to reproduce your problem.
Including CREATE TABLE and INSERT statements usually helps.
State what version of SQL Server you are using and specify the content
of any error messages.

SQL Server Books Online:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/library/ms130214(en-US,SQL.90).aspx
--

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