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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-10T22:06:52+00:00

When using temp tables in SQL Server stored procs, is the preferred practice to;

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When using temp tables in SQL Server stored procs, is the preferred practice to;

1) Create the temp table, populate it, use it then drop it

CREATE TABLE #MyTable ( ... )

-- Do stuff

DROP TABLE #MyTable

2) Check if it exists, drop it if it does, then create and use it

IF object_id('tempdb..#MyTable') IS NOT NULL
DROP TABLE #MyTable

CREATE TABLE #MyTable ( ... )

3) Create it and let SQL Server clean it up when it goes out of scope

CREATE TABLE #MyTable ( ... )

-- Do Stuff

I read in this answer and its associated comments, that this can be useful in situations where the temp table is reused that SQL Server will truncate the table but keep the structure to save time.

My stored proc is likely to be called pretty frequently, but it only contains a few columns, so I don’t know how advantageous this really is in my situation.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You could test and see if one method outperforms another in your scenario. I’ve heard about this reuse benefit but I haven’t performed any extensive tests myself. (My gut instinct is to explicitly drop any #temp objects I’ve created.)

    In a single stored procedure you should never have to check if the table exists – unless it is also possible that the procedure is being called from another procedure that might have created a table with the same name. This is why it is good practice to name #temp tables meaningfully instead of using #t, #x, #y etc.

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