Question

This code does not work, returning the error:

BEGIN
  CREATE VIEW [dbo].[dummy] AS SELECT 1 AS Dummy
END
GO`

Incorrect syntax near the keyword 'VIEW'.

Why?

Notes:

• The presence of the GO statement
  seems to make no difference

• The inner statement works fine outside of the code block delimiters.

• This is part of a larger query but
  tested in isolation just as it is
  presented here.

Answer 1

It’s because CREATE VIEW must be the first statement in a batch as described in this MSDN reference.

Instead, you could do:
e.g.

.....
    BEGIN 
        EXECUTE('CREATE VIEW [dbo].[dummy] AS SELECT 1 AS Dummy')
    END