The first question is do you really need all the columns. Most times you don't need them. There will be network overhead for sure in returning all columns instead of just the few that you want. Also select * is not very clear with what is going on in the statement. Where I work we have standards to always qualify the columns by name and to not use the *.Another issue I have seen is that if your code logic assumes that select * returns column1 column2 column3 and you add a new column to that table your logic can break. I often see the select * used when people get lazy. To me select * should only be used in ad-hoc fashion when digging around in tables and such. Just my 2 cents umn On 9/1/05, Tan Chen Yee <tancy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > If I want to retrieve all columns from a table, is there any disadvantage > by > using select * > instead of listing all the columns ? Will select * cause overhead, more > times to run ? > > Thanks ! > > Tan > > > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- > TIP 1: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate > subscribe-nomail command to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx so that your > message can get through to the mailing list cleanly > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 9: In versions below 8.0, the planner will ignore your desire to choose an index scan if your joining column's datatypes do not match