A while ago, I read a post from Aaron Bertrand (B|T) regarding an appeal to start using semi-colons actively as statement terminators. Semi-colons as statement-terminators has been around for as long as I can remember, however, they have only been made mandatory in the newer statements:

• A semi-colon is required before the WITH clause (as in Common Table Expressions, CTE)
• The MERGE statement must end with a semi-colon
• In SQL 2012, the THROW statement also requires that the preceding statement ends with a semi-colon

Because the semi-colon is not mandatory, most developers do not use semi-colons in the T-SQL queries that they write. However as Aaron points out, it is already documented in Books On Line that the semi-colon will be a required feature:

Although the semicolon is not required for most statements in this version of SQL Server, it will be required in a future version.

For most teams, this would mean to modify almost every line of code and a huge testing & development effort. To mitigate the high development effort and bring reliability in the process, teams may decide to write a small program that would add semi-colons after each statement. But there’s a small catch.

Exception to the rule: The batch separator cannot be suffixed by a semi-colon.

USE AdventureWorks2012;
GO;

The code above would simply fail to compile with the following error.

Msg 102, Level 15, State 1, Line 2

Incorrect syntax near ‘GO’.

The reason is quite simple – a T-SQL statement is a sub-set of a batch. Because “GO” is a batch separator, it cannot be suffixed by a statement terminator because an active T-SQL batch would not exist at that time.

Reference:

• Ladies and Gentlemen, start your semi-colons! by Aaron Bertrand (B|T)
• T-SQL Syntax Conventions
• “GO” as Batch Separator – Customize batch separator in SSMS & SQLCMD

Until we meet next time,

Be courteous. Drive responsibly.