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Asked: 2026-05-13T19:56:51+00:00

I find myself unwilling to push to using JOIN when I can easily solve

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I find myself unwilling to push to using JOIN when I can easily solve the same problem by using an inner query:

e.g.

SELECT COLUMN1, ( SELECT COLUMN1 FROM TABLE2 WHERE TABLE2.ID = TABLE1.TABLE2ID ) AS COLUMN2 FROM TABLE1;

My question is, is this a bad programming practice? I find it easier to read and maintain as opposed to a join.

UPDATE

I want to add that there’s some great feedback in here which in essence is pushing be back to using JOIN. I am finding myself less and less involved with using TSQL directly these days as of a result of ORM solutions (LINQ to SQL, NHibernate, etc.), but when I do it’s things like correlated subqueries which I find are easier to type out linearly.

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  1. Editorial Team

    Personally, I find this incredibly difficult to read. It isn’t the structure a SQL developer expects. By using JOIN, you are keeping all of your table sources in a single spot instead of spreading it throughout your query.

    What happens if you need to have three or four joins? Putting all of those into the SELECT clause is going to get hairy.

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