SELECT * Does Not Hurt Performance
I read all the time how SELECT * hurts performance. I even see where people have said that you just have to supply a column list instead of SELECT * to get a performance improvement. Let's test it, because I think this is bunkum. The Test I have here two queries: SELECT * FROM Warehouse.StockItemTransactions AS sit; --and SELECT sit.StockItemTransactionID, sit.StockItemID, sit.TransactionTypeID, sit.CustomerID, sit.InvoiceID, sit.SupplierID, sit.PurchaseOrderID, sit.TransactionOccurredWhen, sit.Quantity, sit.LastEditedBy, sit.LastEditedWhen FROM Warehouse.StockItemTransactions AS sit; I'm basically going to run this a few hundred times each from PowerShell. I'll capture the executions using Extended Events and we'll aggregate the results. The Results I ran the test multiple times because, funny enough, I kept seeing some disparity in the results. One test would show a clear bias for one method, another test would…