Chapter 2. Temporary Tables and Table Variables

T-SQL programming often involves the need to materialize data temporarily. Temporary tables are just one solution; other ways for handling an independent physical or logical materialization of a set include table variables and table expressions such as views, inline user-defined functions (UDFs), derived tables, and common table expressions (CTEs).

You might need to physically persist interim states of your data for performance reasons, or just as a staging area. Examples of such scenarios include:

  • Materializing aggregated data to some level of granularity ...

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