Seeder Question:
I have seen people talk about expressions and statements in T-SQL, but I don't understand the difference. Can the two be used interchangeably?
asked
What is the difference between an Expression and a Statement?
An expression can be evaluated, and as such returns a single value. It is only one possible part of a statement.
A statement is a collection of elements such as identifiers, reserved keywords, data types, functions, expressions, operators and comments, to make the smallest possible unit of code. A statement can be executed.
An expression returns a single value. A statement defines control of flow, data manipulation, or data definition operations. Column names, variables, constants, functions and formulas using any of the preceding are all expressions. Certain subqueries that return only a single value may also be considered expressions.
It's worth mentioning that one of the difficulties newcomers to SQL experience when working with a CASE expression is that they confuse it with an IF statement. The key to understanding which is which is the realization that CASE, unlike IF, does no flow control: it simply returns a single value. CASE (or ISNULL or COALESCE) is really more like a function with embedded IF logic.
What I roughly know about this is that an expression is like a phrase; a statement is like a complete sentence. A statement can include one or more expressions to carry out a computation.
An expression is the scornful look on her face when you make a statement about her ill-fitting dress
