Question

Are BEGIN/END needed in SQL scripts (in general) or is it fine to replace them with { and }

Example:

IF DB_ID('comics') IS NOT NULL        
    BEGIN
        PRINT 'Database exists - dropping the comics database.';
        DROP DATABASE comics;
    END

VS

IF DB_ID('comics') IS NOT NULL        
{
    PRINT 'Database exists - dropping the comics database.';
    DROP DATABASE comics;
}

I am using MS SQL Server 2008 R2

Answer 1

The documentation for IF...ELSE shows:

IF Boolean_expression 
     { sql_statement | statement_block } 
[ ELSE 
     { sql_statement | statement_block } ] 

However, the Transact-SQL Syntax Conventions (Transact-SQL) page shows:

{ } (braces)    Required syntax items. Do not type the braces.

So, the braces aren’t something that you can enter in your code, but instead are simply showing that there is exactly one sql_statement or statement_block required in an IF statement. (Of course, a statement_block can contain multiple sql_statements as long as you use BEGIN and END around them.)