I wrote a stored procedure to import and transform data from one database to another. Each import would take a single company ID and import all data related to this company.
To help with the transformation step I use temporary tables. As part of script review, I was told to use table variables rather than temporary tables. The reviewer claims that if we run two different imports at the same time, the temporary table would be shared and corrupt the import.
Questions:
EXEC
create a new scope?Here is a contrived example of the script.
CREATE PROC [dbo].[ImportCompany]
(
@CompanyId AS INTEGER
)
AS
EXEC [dbo].[ImportAddress] @CompanyId = @CompanyId
--Import other data
CREATE PROC [dbo].[ImportAddress]
(
@CompanyId AS INTEGER
)
AS
CREATE TABLE #Companies (OldAddress NVARCHAR(128), NewAddress NVARCHAR(128))
INSERT INTO #Companies(OldAddress, NewAddress)
SELECT
Address as OldAddress,
'Transformed ' + Address as NewAddress
FROM
[OldDb].[dbo].[Addresses]
WHERE
CompanyId = @CompanyId
--Do stuff with the transformed data
DROP TABLE #Companies
EXEC [dbo].[ImportCompany] @CompanyId = 12345
From CREATE TABLE
:
Local temporary tables are visible only in the current session
and (more importantly):
If a local temporary table is created in a stored procedure or application that can be executed at the same time by several users, the Database Engine must be able to distinguish the tables created by the different users [sic - almost certainly this should say sessions not users]. The Database Engine does this by internally appending a numeric suffix to each local temporary table name.
Which exactly rebuts the point of whoever said that they would be shared.
Also, there's no need to DROP TABLE
at the end of your procedure (from same link again):
A local temporary table created in a stored procedure is dropped automatically when the stored procedure is finished