Which is faster/best? SELECT * or SELECT column1, colum2, column3, etc

Question

I\'ve heard that SELECT * is generally bad practice to use when writing SQL commands because it is more efficient to SELECT columns you specificall

Answer 1

In terms of execution efficiency I am not aware of any significant difference. But for programmers efficiency I would write the names of the fields because

• You know the order if you need to index by number, or if your driver behaves funny on blob-values, and you need a definite order
• You only read the fields you need, if you should ever add more fields
• You get an sql-error if you misspell or rename a field, not an empty value from a recordset/row
• You can better read what's going on.