Subquery as column

  • Is this
    select (select top 1 organisation from sysfile) as org,* from area1
    More efficient than a join ?
    i.e. will it do the subquery to get the organisation and then release the share lock straight away on sysfile ?
    organisation is the same for every row of area 1 so a join in not needed as such
    Thanks 

  • You'll probably get exactly the same execution plan either way.

    But for ease of clarity, coding and maintenance, I'd write it this way:


    SELECT sf.org, a1.*
    FROM area1 a1
    CROSS JOIN (
        SELECT TOP (1) organisation AS org
        FROM sysfile
    ) AS sf

    SQL DBA,SQL Server MVP(07, 08, 09) "It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I'm wearing Milk-Bone underwear." "Norm", on "Cheers". Also from "Cheers", from "Carla": "You need to know 3 things about Tortelli men: Tortelli men draw women like flies; Tortelli men treat women like flies; Tortelli men's brains are in their flies".

  • Thanks
    So you are saying it does not matter much where in the query the access to sysfile goes it's going to get a shared lock on it that will last as many rows as are in Area1 ?

  • If you're comfortable with the fact that if the subquery runs first and then releases its lock then its results may have changed by the time the main query has finished, then you could run it separately, just for peace of mind.

    DECLARE @org sysname -- or whatever data type it is
    SELECT @org = MAX(organisation) -- if you're looking for the highest value of organisation
    FROM sysfile

    Bear in mind that TOP without an ORDER BY isn't going to give you a deterministic result.

    John

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