Just a day ago, while working with some inventory related projects, I faced one interesting situation. I had to find TOP 1 and BOTTOM 1 record together. I right away that I should just do UNION but then I realize that UNION will not work as it will only accept one ORDER BY clause. If you specify more than one ORDER BY clause. It will give an error. Let us see how we can retrieve top and bottom rows together.
It is indeed true Microsoft will official support ends of the product on July 9, 2019. Comprehensive Database Performance Health Check.
Many times I have seen issue of SELECT 1 vs SELECT * discussed in terms of performance or readability while checking for existence of rows in table. I ran quick 4 tests about this observed that I am getting same result when used SELECT 1 and SELECT *. I think smart readers of this blog will come up the situation when SELECT 1 and SELECT * have different execution plan when used to find existence of rows.
SQL Server Management Studio is an amazing product and I am personally a big fan of the same. Here are the few latest blog written on the same subject.