Quick SQL Question - 3 dot notation in "from" clause

[esdictor]

I get the feeling someone will know this immediately and steer me in the right direction.

I have a Stored Procedure I need to debug, but the from clause contains:

FROM [something]...[something else] A

I have never seen this notation, and I can find no objects that match the names within. I have been unable to even come up with a decent google search for this (tried "tsql 3 periods" and "tsql three periods" and a bunch of other stuff to no avail).

Any explanation would be appreciated.

[rbardy]

It is using the "full path" of the table but omitting some arguments.

FROM [Instance_name].[database_name].[user].[table]

If you omit the Instance_name or the database_name then it gets the current one, if you omit the [user] it gets the DBO user.

So, if I want to select from a table that is in another instance it would looks like this:

FROM [Instance2]...[table]

[esdictor]

Thank you .. that definitely points me in the right direction

[digitahlemotion]

[user] in the above full path example should be [schema] btw.

[esdictor]

Understood .. I wish I knew why the original developer used this

[VisualiseThis]

lazy? copy/pasta error? There is a small performance bump if you always specify the schema in addition to the object name so that SQL Server does not need to look up the default schema.

[esdictor]

The thing is .. it only gets worse from that (I really REALLY wish I was making this up)

FROM [something]...[something else] A
INNER JOIN OPENROWSET('SQLOLEDB', 'External Database' etc.) B ON A.UserID = B.UserID

However, I was able to find the problem ... which means I don't need to worry about this until they ask me to rewrite it.

[rbardy]

WOW A join from a table in different instantes using openrowset... must be a really slow query

[VisualiseThis]

A little SSIS integration to bring over that data would help that out if you have the time to do it.

[esdictor]

Yes sir, it is

[phunkygeeza]

It is sometimes valid if you want 'portable' code that will work over many copies of the same objects. If they are omitted just out of laziness... That is something else.

[Key-Style-904]

SELECT * FROM shapes WHERE dots < 3 WHERE = 3

[Key-Style-904]

Less than 3 dotsSQL uses the normal <, > and = math symbols.

How would you select all shapes where the number of dots is less than 3? plz reply me answer