SQL select join: is it possible to prefix all columns as 'prefix.*'?

Question

I\'m wondering if this is possible in SQL. Say you have two tables A and B, and you do a select on table A and join on table B:

SELECT a.*, b.* FROM TABLE_A a         


        

Answer 1

select * usually makes for bad code, as new columns tend to get added or order of columns change in tables quite frequently which usually breaks select * in a very subtle ways. So listing out columns is the right solution.

As to how to do your query, not sure about mysql but in sqlserver you could select column names from syscolumns and dynamically build the select clause.