Question

Can some one explain the significant of the brackets that MSManagement Studio always encapsulates columns in queries with.
Ex..

SELECT TOP 1000 [id]
  ,[app_fn]
  ,[app_mn]
  ,[app_ln]
  ,[app_suffix]

What are they there for, and how can I use this to my advantage?

Answer 1

They allow to use identifiers that

• have spaces
• are reserved keywords
• start with a number
• use punctuation
• otherwise invalid

Try this without the [ and ]

CREATE TABLE dbo.[CREATE TABLE] (
    [SELECT] int NOT NULL, 
    [int] varchar(20) NOT NULL,
    [NOT NULL] datetime NULL,
    [Mary's Lamb] datetime NULL,
    [666 The number of the "beast"!] datetime NULL
    )

In this case, SSMS just always uses them