Understanding APPLY Clause in SQL Server 2005
page 2 of 6
by Sachin Dedhia
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The Limitation

In SQL Server 2000 table-valued functions can be joined to a result set of another table expression.  However, table-valued functions cannot be invoked for each row returned by the joined table expression.  To understand this better let us discuss an example.  The example may not be a real world example, but sufficient enough to bring out the limitation we are discussing.

Say we have a table-valued function "fn_DepartmentEmployees (int DeptId)" that accepts department ID and returns the list of employees' names and salaries along with the department ID.

To get a list of employees' names and salaries for department #1 we simple pass a scalar input to the function call.

Listing 1

SELECT DeptId, EmpName, EmpSalary 
FROM fn_DepartmentEmployees (1)

To get the name of the department, we can extend the Listing 1 query by joining the function with the "Departments" table.

Listing 2

SELECT DeptName, EmpName, EmpSalary
FROM fn_DepartmentEmployees (1) de
JOIN Departments d ON d.DeptId = de.DeptId

We can even interchange the order of user-defined function and table in the Listing 2 query without any problems.

Now say we want a list of employees' names and salaries for all the departments at one time.  We simply think of extending the Listing 2 query further.

Listing 3

SELECT DeptName, EmpName, EmpSalary
FROM Departments d 
JOIN fn_DepartmentEmployees (d.DeptId) de ON d.DeptId = de.DeptId

When we execute the Listing 3 query we get an error because the table-valued function cannot be invoked for each record returned by the outer table in SQL Server 2000.

However, in SQL Server 2005 the APPLY clause comes to our rescue.

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User Comments

Title: The Apply Clause   
Name: Shailesh
Date: 2010-09-16 9:51:08 AM
The presentation is better as compared to the MSDN article.

Small and Sweet!

Title: APPLY clause   
Name: Vivek
Date: 2009-07-08 11:24:18 AM
Excellent Explanation..
Title: The APPLY clause   
Name: Sachin Dedhia
Date: 2009-05-26 4:14:26 PM
Still cannot see why is apply clause any better than join for SQL 2005
Title: user   
Name: user
Date: 2009-04-24 1:22:09 PM
Beautifully explained
Title: "Using APPLY" MSDN article   
Name: Michael Freidgeim
Date: 2009-03-02 4:19:54 PM
You should add reference to "Using APPLY" MSDN article http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms175156.aspx


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