Question

I’ve googled and looked through the MSDN TSQL Reference but haven’t been able to find a definition or explanation on what “..” means or does.

example

if OBJECT_ID('tempdb..#temp') is not null
drop table #temp

Your help in explaining or a referential resource on what “..” and how it is used would be great!

Answer 1

It is a shorthand for telling the database to use the default schema name (dbo).

That just means that the default schema (dbo) should be used. In other words:

Customers..FirstName

is the same thing as

Customers.dbo.FirstName

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic585446-338-1.aspx