How to check if a database exists in SQL Server?

Question

What is the ideal way to check if a database exists on a SQL Server using TSQL? It seems multiple approaches to implement this.

Answer 1

I like @Eduardo's answer and I liked the accepted answer. I like to get back a boolean from something like this, so I wrote it up for you guys.

CREATE FUNCTION dbo.DatabaseExists(@dbname nvarchar(128))
RETURNS bit
AS
BEGIN
    declare @result bit = 0 
    SELECT @result = CAST(
        CASE WHEN db_id(@dbname) is not null THEN 1 
        ELSE 0 
        END 
    AS BIT)
    return @result
END
GO

Now you can use it like this:

select [dbo].[DatabaseExists]('master') --returns 1
select [dbo].[DatabaseExists]('slave') --returns 0