Are there any published coding style guidelines for SQL?

Question

Often I will end up with very complex SQL statements and I wondered if there was style guideline out there that dictates a common way of laying various aspects of a query out.

Answer 1

Here are some SQL programming guidelines and best practices we collected:

• Do not use SELECT * in your queries.
• Always use table aliases when your SQL statement involves more than one source.
• Use the more readable ANSI-Standard Join clauses instead of the old style joins.
• Do not use column numbers in the ORDER BY clause.
• Always use a column list in your INSERT statements.
• Don't ever use double quotes in your T-SQL code.
• Do not prefix your stored procedure names with “sp_”.
• Always use a SQL formatter to format your SQL like Instant SQL Formatter (free and online)

You can check detailed explanation of those best practices in this blog post.