Which is faster/best? SELECT * or SELECT column1, colum2, column3, etc

Question

I\'ve heard that SELECT * is generally bad practice to use when writing SQL commands because it is more efficient to SELECT columns you specificall

Answer 1

Specifying column names is definitely faster - for the server. But if

1. performance is not a big issue (for example, this is a website content database with hundreds, maybe thousands - but not millions - of rows in each table); AND
2. your job is to create many small, similar applications (e.g. public-facing content-managed websites) using a common framework, rather than creating a complex one-off application; AND
3. flexibility is important (lots of customization of the db schema for each site);

then you're better off sticking with SELECT *. In our framework, heavy use of SELECT * allows us to introduce a new website managed content field to a table, giving it all of the benefits of the CMS (versioning, workflow/approvals, etc.), while only touching the code at a couple of points, instead of a couple dozen points.

I know the DB gurus are going to hate me for this - go ahead, vote me down - but in my world, developer time is scarce and CPU cycles are abundant, so I adjust accordingly what I conserve and what I waste.