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

Kickstarter has a style guide here. I have a modified version of that for people who prefer lowercase SQL and Celko's "river".

My style guide is here. Here is a sample:

-- basic select example
select p.Name as ProductName
     , p.ProductNumber
     , pm.Name as ProductModelName
     , p.Color
     , p.ListPrice
  from Production.Product as p
  join Production.ProductModel as pm
    on p.ProductModelID = pm.ProductModelID
 where p.Color in ('Blue', 'Red')
   and p.ListPrice < 800.00
   and pm.Name like '%frame%'
 order by p.Name

-- basic insert example
insert into Sales.Currency (
    CurrencyCode
    ,Name
    ,ModifiedDate
)
values (
    'XBT'
    ,'Bitcoin'
    ,getutcdate()
)

-- basic update example
update p
   set p.ListPrice = p.ListPrice * 1.05
     , p.ModifiedDate = getutcdate()
  from Production.Product as p
 where p.SellEndDate is null
   and p.SellStartDate is not null

-- basic delete example
delete cc
  from Sales.CreditCard as cc
 where cc.ExpYear < '2003'
   and cc.ModifiedDate < dateadd(year, -1, getutcdate())