CTP 2.3 Scalar Function Improvements

Erik Darling see a marginal improvement between CTPs in SQL Server 2019’s ability to optimize scalar functions:

To test FROID, which is the codename for Microsoft’s initiative to inline those awful scalar valued function things that people have been griping about for like 20 years, I like to take functions I’ve seen used in real life and adapt them a bit to work in the Stack Overflow database.

Read on for a case where Erik saw major improvements.