Itzik Ben-Gan continues a series on common table expressions:
If you’re wondering why not use a much simpler solution with a grouped query and a HAVING filter, it has to do with the density of the shipperid column. The Orders table has 1,000,000 orders, and the shipments of those orders were handled by five shippers, meaning that in average, each shipper handled 20% of the orders. The plan for a grouped query computing the maximum order date per shipper would scan all 1,000,000 rows, resulting in thousands of page reads. Indeed, if you highlight just the CTE’s inner query (we’ll call it Query 3) computing the maximum order date per shipper and check its execution plan, you will get the plan shown in Figure 3.
Read on for classic Itzik.