If I needed to retrieve only metadata of a result, what is the difference between using FMTONLY vs. a “select top 0 …” ?
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If I needed to retrieve only metadata of a result, what is the difference between using FMTONLY vs. a “select top 0 …” ?
I was interested in this too, after a bit of googling I found that FMTONLY is the standard vs options like Select top 0 / SELECT whatever WHERE 1=0 because as Icarus said you cant use SELECT TOP 0 for finding out what a stored proc returns.
Also when using FMTONLY Sql server wont generate / compile an execution plan since the statement isnt actually being executed.
FMTONLY is the method SSRS / Visual Studio uses when reading stored procs to get the column names.