Meaning of Square Brackets [] in Ms-SQL Table Designer

Meaning of square brackets [] in MS-SQL table designer?

The square brackets [] are used to delimit identifiers. This is necessary if the column name is a reserved keyword or contains special characters such as a space or hyphen.

Some users also like to use square brackets even when they are not necessary.

From MSDN:

Delimited identifiers

Are enclosed in double quotation marks (") or brackets ([ ]). Identifiers that comply with the rules for the format of identifiers may or may not be delimited.

SELECT *
FROM [TableX]         --Delimiter is optional.
WHERE [KeyCol] = 124  --Delimiter is optional.

Identifiers that do not comply with all of the rules for identifiers must be delimited in a Transact-SQL statement.

SELECT *
FROM [My Table]      --Identifier contains a space and uses a reserved keyword.
WHERE [order] = 10   --Identifier is a reserved keyword.

What is the use of the square brackets [] in sql statements?

The brackets are required if you use keywords or special chars in the column names or identifiers. You could name a column [First Name] (with a space) – but then you'd need to use brackets every time you referred to that column.

The newer tools add them everywhere just in case or for consistency.

Why do square bracket appear with the table name?

When you use SQL Server Management Studio to script out your objects it will enclose all names with square brackets.

They are only necessary when the name contains a space or a reserved word (such as [Name]).

What do brackets mean around column names in SQL Server?

Columns enclosed in square brackets are usually keywords or contain special characters or spaces.

What specific column name do you have enclosed in brackets?

Sql Server 2005 Puts square brackets around column name

The problem is that the field has the same name as the table. Sql Server 2000 did not seem to care about this potential ambiguity, but Sql Server 2005 does. When I add a field named Content to a table that is not named Content, the square brackets do not appear.

pamela

What is difference in SQL Server between [] and ' '

Single quotes denote a string literal, while square brackets ([..] - SQL Server/T-SQL specific) or double quotes (ANSI/ISO SQL standard) can enclose table (or column) names with spaces ("Order Items"), or names that start with a numeric (instead of a character - like [1998 Sales]).

So you should also be able to use this:

SELECT *
FROM "Order Details"
WHERE OrderID = 11077

[] brackets in sql statements

The [] marks the delimitation of a identifier, so if you have a column whose name contains spaces like Order Qty you need to enclose it with [] like:

select [Order qty] from [Client sales]

They are also to escape reserved keywords used as identifiers

Why is Entity Framework including square brackets in my column name? '

I'm not an expert in EF by any means, but I'm guessing it's adding the square brackets around "Content" because this is a reserved keyword in SQL (looks like it's used with the XML datatype); whenever there's a chance for collision, you use the square bracket syntax in T-SQL to denote identifiers (table/column names).

Square Bracket SQL

You can switch to conditional aggregation:

select . . . ,
       sum(case when monthyear = '01' then a else 0 end) as mon_01,
       sum(case when monthyear = '02' then a else 0 end) as mon_02,
       . . . 
from . . .
group by . . .;

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