Day: August 11, 2026

Rob Farley explains a position:

Let me say for starters that I’m pleased we have temporary tables. They’re tremendously useful, but often get abused. Compared to obvious villains like NOLOCK, cursors, and scalar functions, they’re really quite inane (but any of these features can be used for good – trust me). But temporary tables were the one of these I mentioned in last month’s post about signs of a bad query. If nothing else, using temporary tables probably means you’re writing procedural code rather than set-based queries.

The scenario I want to talk about is using temporary tables to materialise a set of data, ahead of using it in a separate query a moment later. That’s essentially what Jeff Taylor is asking us to comment on.

I agree very strongly with Rob’s position. In stored procedures, temp tables should be there for a specific reason, a resignation that it is a second- or third-best design decision. But sometimes, you need second-best because first-best doesn’t perform well enough.

Andy Brownsword shares an opinion:

For August’s T-SQL Tuesday ask, Jeff has thrown temp tables to the wolves. Does the community like or loathe their usage?

I’ll predict a few ‘it depends’ responses, and I lean towards Jeff’s position that they’re more of the exception than the rule. I’d argue there’s one particular scenario where this exception becomes exceptional (heh).

I imagine that this topic will get a bit of play this month and that it will be a bit more contentious than some might expect. I do like Andy’s scenario of when temp tables become quite valuable.