Question

Do you place separators (commas, and, or operators) at the front of the line?

Select Field1
    , Field2
  --, Field3
From [some_table] as ST
Inner Join [other_table] as OT
   ON ST.PKID = OT.FKID
Where [this] = [that]
   and [one_other] > 53;

I think the best feature is to help expose important operators (AND/OR). As a secondary advantage it seems easier to comment out.

Not sure where I picked it up initially, but Andrew Novick mentions it in “Transact-SQL User-Defined Function” (Heard him speak; got the book for free and highly recommend.)

Answer 1

At my workplace (small consultancy company with about 10 developers, specialising in Oracle) that is what our convention is, as so:

SELECT
  p.id pd_id
, p.var_no
, p.status
, o.name operator
, o.r_id
, o.r_type
, o.start_datetime
, o.end_datetime
--, p.id rd_id
--, p.s_control
, p.xml_data last_d_res_xml
FROM schema_a.table_x p
JOIN schema_b.table_y o ON p.id = o.pd_id
WHERE p.some_id = 11
ORDER BY pd_id DESC, end_datetime DESC NULLS FIRST

We find it is quite clear and allows easy commenting of columns when debugging. It took a while to get used to but I prefer this style now – and it is consistently used by our whole team.