Home/ Questions/Q 6572953
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-25T15:04:14+00:00

I always thought SELECT * was bad and that you should always return only

  • 0

I always thought SELECT * was bad and that you should always return only the columns you are going to use. One of the reasons for this is that the DB can return the result without hitting any tables if all the columns needed are in the index.

I have a factory class that loads the properties of a Product object. It loads all the properties everytime GetProduct is called etc.

Many of the pages won’t be using all of the Product properties even though they will be loaded from the database because of the SELECT*.

Is there any design advice/guidelines on this?

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I’d definitely avoid SELECT *. Just retrieve the data you know you’ll need. I’d prefer to write a dozen queries to the same table, where each one refers to just the few columns I need for a particular purpose, rather than write one query that retrieves all the columns and just use that everywhere.

    Even if you know you need every column currently in a table, list each one explicitly. That way, if someone adds half a dozen more columns to the table in the future, all your old queries won’t suddenly be retrieving more data than is needed.

    • 0