Question

When calling a stored procedure outside of a BEGIN…END block, I don’t need to use the EXEC or EXECUTE command; the following works:

SP_RENAME '[dbo].[TableName].[old_column]', 'new_column', 'COLUMN'

However, when I move this line inside a BEGIN…END block, it will throw a synatx error unless I use the EXEC or EXECUTE command:

IF EXISTS(SELECT * FROM sys.columns WHERE Name = N'old_column' AND Object_ID = Object_ID(N'TableName'))
BEGIN
    EXEC SP_RENAME '[dbo].[TableName].[old_column]', 'new_column', 'COLUMN'
END

Any reason why?

Answer 1

From MSDN’s EXECUTE Article:

You do not have to specify the EXECUTE keyword when executing stored
procedures if the statement is the first one in a batch.

Therefore, your second example throws the error because the stored procedure call is not the first statement in the batch.