Avoiding Manual Column Listing in SQL SELECT Statements

The standard SQL SELECT * FROM table statement retrieves all columns. However, omitting specific columns without listing the rest manually can be challenging. This article presents a solution for efficiently excluding columns from a SELECT query.

The question arises: how to exclude a column (columnA) from a SELECT query without explicitly naming every other column? Directly using SELECT * [except columnA] FROM tableA isn't valid SQL syntax.

An Efficient Approach

Here's a method to achieve this efficiently:

1. Create a temporary table: Use SELECT ... INTO to create a temporary table containing all columns from the source table.

SELECT * INTO #TempTable
FROM tableA;

2. Remove the unwanted column: Employ ALTER TABLE ... DROP COLUMN to eliminate the target column from the temporary table.

ALTER TABLE #TempTable
DROP COLUMN columnA;

3. Retrieve data: Select all data from the modified temporary table, effectively excluding the dropped column.

SELECT * FROM #TempTable;

4. Clean up: Drop the temporary table to release resources.

DROP TABLE #TempTable;

This technique provides a streamlined way to exclude columns, especially beneficial when working with tables containing numerous columns. It avoids the error-prone and time-consuming task of manually specifying each column to be included.