TSQL - If..Else statement inside Table-Valued Functions - cant go through

Question

Before posting I have read few articles about developing USD functions, but have not encountered solutions for my problem... which is as follows:

I have a very simple database, which stores basketball players and consists of ID, Age, Height and Name column. What I would like to do is to implement a function 'height' with one parameter @set varchar(10), that depending one @set value will trigger off different select statements

what I was trying to implement was in psuedo-code:

CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[age](@set varchar(10))
RETURNS TABLE
AS
BEGIN

    IF  (@set = 'tall')
         SELECT * from player where height > 180

    ELSE IF (@set = 'average')
         SELECT * from player where height >= 155 and height <=175

    ELSE IF (@set = 'low')
         SELECT * from player where height < 155
END

Could anyone give me a hint how to implement it?

Answer 1

You were close. Using a multi-statement table-valued function requires the return table to be specified and populated in the function:

CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[age](@set varchar(10))
RETURNS @Players TABLE
(
    -- Put the players table definition here
) 
AS
BEGIN

    IF  (@set = 'tall')
         INSERT INTO @Players SELECT * from player where height > 180

    ELSE IF (@set = 'average')
         INSERT INTO @Players SELECT * from player where height >= 155 and height <=175

    ELSE IF (@set = 'low')
         INSERT INTO @Players SELECT * from player where height < 155

    RETURN -- @Players (variable only required for Scalar functions)

END

I would recommend using an inline TVF as Richard's answer demonstrates. It can infer the table return from your statement.

Note also that a multi-statement and inline TVFs are really quite different. An inline TVF is less of a black-box to the optimizer and more like a parametrized view in terms of the optimizer being able to rearrange things with other tables and views in the same execution plan.