It is well known that SELECT * is not acceptable in production code, with the exception of this pattern: IF EXISTS( SELECT * We all know that whenever we see code code like this: Listing 1. "Bad" SQL SELECT Column1 , Column2 FROM ( SELECT c. * , ROW_NUMBER () OVER ( PARTITION BY Column1 ORDER BY Column2 ) AS rn FROM data.SomeTable AS c ) AS c WHERE rn < 5 we are supposed to automatically replace * with an explicit list of columns, as follows: Listing 2. "Good" SQL SELECT Column1 , Column2 FROM...(read more)