Question

I have a stored procedure in this form:

ALTER PROCEDURE [dbo].[fooBar]
(
)
AS
BEGIN
-- etc
RETURN  @Success
END

It had been working perfectly with BEGIN and END in it before, but after changing something and reverting it back, it refused to execute, pointing to a syntax error at the last END (removing that next pointed to a syntax error at the first IF/BEGIN/…. statement inside the procedure, and thus begins your wild goose chase).

Looking at the MSDN official documentation for the syntax, BEGIN and END used in this way to envelope a stored procedure is illegal. (Removing the BEGIN and END solved the problem)

Question: Why did this happen?

Did the compiler skip over this BEGIN and END initially and later discover it? Are there some things that the SQL compiler ignores? Is it legacy? Is it just finicky? Am I missing a hotfix?

This is SQL Server 10.50.1617

Answer 1

BEGIN/END are perfectly valid for a stored procedure. This is explicitly set in the grammar at the documentation page you linked to.

It is the parentheses that are not allowed.