Types of Functions
Officially, SQL Server supports three types of user-defined functions:
Scalar functions
Inline table-valued functions
Multistatement table-valued functions
The next few sections take an in-depth look at the differences between the function types and how and where you can use them.
Scalar Functions
Scalar functions are like the built-in functions provided with SQL Server. They return a single scalar value that can be used anywhere a constant expression can be used in a query, as you saw in the previous example of the getdateonly() function.
Scalar functions typically take one or more arguments and return a value of a specified datatype. All functions must return a result using the RETURN statement. The value to be returned can ...
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