可以把它看作是减少应用程序和数据库之间的耦合。

总结一下“代码气味”方面: SELECT *在应用程序和模式之间创建一个动态依赖关系。限制它的使用是使依赖更加明确的一种方法，否则对数据库的更改更有可能使应用程序崩溃。

如果您将字段添加到表中，它们将自动包含在使用select *的所有查询中。这看起来很方便，但它会使您的应用程序变慢，因为您获取的数据比您需要的要多，并且它实际上会在某些时候使您的应用程序崩溃。

在结果的每一行中可以获取多少数据是有限制的。如果向表中添加字段导致结果超过了限制，则在尝试运行查询时将收到错误消息。

这是一种很难发现的错误。您在一个地方做了更改，而在另一个实际上根本不使用新数据的地方它就会崩溃。它甚至可能是一个不太常用的查询，以至于在有人使用它之前需要一段时间，这使得将错误与更改联系起来更加困难。

如果指定希望在结果中显示哪些字段，就不会出现这种开销溢出。

有三个主要原因:

Inefficiency in moving data to the consumer. When you SELECT *, you're often retrieving more columns from the database than your application really needs to function. This causes more data to move from the database server to the client, slowing access and increasing load on your machines, as well as taking more time to travel across the network. This is especially true when someone adds new columns to underlying tables that didn't exist and weren't needed when the original consumers coded their data access. Indexing issues. Consider a scenario where you want to tune a query to a high level of performance. If you were to use *, and it returned more columns than you actually needed, the server would often have to perform more expensive methods to retrieve your data than it otherwise might. For example, you wouldn't be able to create an index which simply covered the columns in your SELECT list, and even if you did (including all columns [shudder]), the next guy who came around and added a column to the underlying table would cause the optimizer to ignore your optimized covering index, and you'd likely find that the performance of your query would drop substantially for no readily apparent reason. Binding Problems. When you SELECT *, it's possible to retrieve two columns of the same name from two different tables. This can often crash your data consumer. Imagine a query that joins two tables, both of which contain a column called "ID". How would a consumer know which was which? SELECT * can also confuse views (at least in some versions SQL Server) when underlying table structures change -- the view is not rebuilt, and the data which comes back can be nonsense. And the worst part of it is that you can take care to name your columns whatever you want, but the next guy who comes along might have no way of knowing that he has to worry about adding a column which will collide with your already-developed names.

但这对SELECT *来说也不全是坏事。我在以下用例中大量使用它:

Ad-hoc queries. When trying to debug something, especially off a narrow table I might not be familiar with, SELECT * is often my best friend. It helps me just see what's going on without having to do a boatload of research as to what the underlying column names are. This gets to be a bigger "plus" the longer the column names get. When * means "a row". In the following use cases, SELECT * is just fine, and rumors that it's a performance killer are just urban legends which may have had some validity many years ago, but don't now: SELECT COUNT(*) FROM table; in this case, * means "count the rows". If you were to use a column name instead of * , it would count the rows where that column's value was not null. COUNT(*), to me, really drives home the concept that you're counting rows, and you avoid strange edge-cases caused by NULLs being eliminated from your aggregates. Same goes with this type of query: SELECT a.ID FROM TableA a WHERE EXISTS ( SELECT * FROM TableB b WHERE b.ID = a.B_ID); in any database worth its salt, * just means "a row". It doesn't matter what you put in the subquery. Some people use b's ID in the SELECT list, or they'll use the number 1, but IMO those conventions are pretty much nonsensical. What you mean is "count the row", and that's what * signifies. Most query optimizers out there are smart enough to know this. (Though to be honest, I only know this to be true with SQL Server and Oracle.)

在很多情况下，SELECT *会在应用程序的运行时导致错误，而不是在设计时。它隐藏了应用程序中列更改或坏引用的信息。

当您只需要几列时使用SELECT *意味着传输的数据比您需要的多得多。这增加了数据库上的处理，并增加了将数据获取到客户端的延迟。此外，它在加载时将使用更多内存，在某些情况下会使用更多内存，例如大型BLOB文件，这主要是关于效率。

然而，除此之外，在查看查询时更容易看到正在加载哪些列，而不必查找表中的内容。

是的，如果您确实添加了一个额外的列，它会更快，但在大多数情况下，您希望/需要使用查询更改代码以接受新列，并且有可能获得您不想要/期望的列会导致问题。例如，如果获取所有列，然后依赖循环中的顺序来分配变量，然后再添加一个，或者如果列的顺序发生了变化(从备份恢复时就发生过这种情况)，它可能会丢弃所有内容。

这也是为什么在执行INSERT操作时总是要指定列的原因。

我不认为这真的可以有一个通用的规则。在许多情况下，我避免使用SELECT *，但我也使用过SELECT *非常有用的数据框架。

和所有事情一样，有收益也有成本。我认为收益与成本的等式的一部分是你对数据结构有多少控制。在SELECT *工作良好的情况下，数据结构受到严格控制(它是零售软件)，因此没有太大的风险，有人会将一个巨大的BLOB字段发送到表中。