I am adding some validation to a couple of stored procedures and need to check if some of the variables are not null (they are populated earlier in the stored procedure).
I have been trying to add a "throw" inside an if statement like below:
IF (@val is null)
BEGIN
THROW 50001, 'Custom text', 1
END
This causes a syntax error on the "throw" as it is looking for other code inside the if statement prior to the throw but I only need it to perform the throw inside the if statement.
I need to keep the stored procedure as light as possible to keep it as fast as possible to execute.
Does anyone have any ideas?
The syntax error is showing up because the previous statement hasn't been terminated. The other answers will work, but in order to do it this way you can either throw a semicolon right before the THROW, or get in the habit of terminating all statements with semicolons.
IF (@val is null)
BEGIN
;THROW 50001, 'Custom text', 1
END
or
IF (@val is null)
BEGIN;
THROW 50001, 'Custom text', 1;
END;
You may have noticed that:
IF (@val is null)
THROW 50001, 'Custom text', 1
... will also work, and this is because SQL Server knows that the next thing to come after an IF statement is always a new T-SQL statement.
It is perhaps worth noting that Microsoft has stated that the T-SQL language in the future will require semicolons after each statement, so my recommendation would be to start building the habit now.