CASE in WHERE, SQL Server

Question

I\'m doing some search, where users are choosing in dropdown some clauses. When they leave some box empty, I want query to ignore clause. I know CASE, and best I thought of

Answer 1

A few ways:

-- Do the comparison, OR'd with a check on the @Country=0 case
WHERE (a.Country = @Country OR @Country = 0)

-- compare the Country field to itself
WHERE a.Country = CASE WHEN @Country > 0 THEN @Country ELSE a.Country END

Or, use a dynamically generated statement and only add in the Country condition if appropriate. This should be most efficient in the sense that you only execute a query with the conditions that actually need to apply and can result in a better execution plan if supporting indices are in place. You would need to use parameterised SQL to prevent against SQL injection.