Is there a way to use a function on a Microsoft SQL Server Query without using "dbo." before the function?

sql-server user-defined-functions dbo
alexzm1 picture alexzm1 · Mar 5, 2011 · Viewed 7.8k times · Source

Is there a way to call a User defined function without using "dbo." before the function name and parameters?

Using:

SELECT USERFUNCTION(PARAM1, PARAM2, PARAM3, PARAMN)

instead of:

SELECT dbo.USERFUNCTION(PARAM1, PARAM2, PARAM3, PARAMN)

Answer

Martin Smith picture Martin Smith · Mar 5, 2011

This isn't possible for the SELECT syntax. BOL States: "Scalar-valued functions must be invoked by using at least the two-part name of the function"

This syntax works however.

CREATE FUNCTION USERFUNCTION
(@p INT)
RETURNS INT
AS
BEGIN
RETURN (2)
END

GO

DECLARE @rc INT

EXEC @rc = USERFUNCTION 1

SELECT @rc

It is best practice to always explicitly schema qualify objects you are referencing anyway though to avoid some overhead for resolving the schema (and avoid the possibility that the schema cannot be resolved implicitly or is resolved in a way that is undesired)

Related questions

How to strip all non-alphabetic characters from string in SQL Server?

How could you remove all characters that are not alphabetic from a string? What about non-alphanumeric? Does this have to be a custom function or are there also more generalizable solutions?

Read More
SQL User Defined Function Within Select

I have a user defined function in SQL called getBuisnessDays it takes @startdate and @enddate and returns the number of business days between the two dates. How can I call that function within my select? Here's what I'd like to …

Read More
How to determine the number of days in a month in SQL Server?

I need to determine the number of days in a month for a given date in SQL Server. Is there a built-in function? If not, what should I use as the user-defined function?

Read More