What is the reason not to use select *?

Question

I\'ve seen a number of people claim that you should specifically name each column you want in your select query.

Assuming I\'m going to use all of the columns anyway

Answer 1

Generally bad to use 'select *' inside of views because you will be forced to recompile the view in the event of a table column change. Changing the underlying table columns of a view you will get an error for non-existant columns until you go back and recompile.

Answer 2

To answer you question directly: Do not use "SELECT *" when it makes your code more fragle to changes to the underlying tables. Your code should break only when a change is made to the table that directly affects requirments of your program.

Your application should take advantage of the abstraction layer that Relational access provides.