Michael J. Swart

The answer is no, but I saw something interesting when I was finding out (sometimes a one minute experiment is more effective than looking up behavior on books online).

I ran the following:

exec sp_executesql N'select 1
go
select 2
go'

Now, before reading further try to guess what the results are (or the error message).

I was surprised with the these results:

/*
go
-----------
1
 
go
-----------
2
*/

Which was unexpected. The query worked! But it treated the “go” keywords as column aliases. Of course if you were to do any one of the following:

• Redefine your batch separator.
• Use semicolons after the select statements
• Add column aliases to these queries

Then you do get the expected error:

/*
Msg 102, Level 15, State 1, Line 2
Incorrect syntax near 'go'.
Msg 102, Level 15, State 1, Line 4
Incorrect syntax near 'go'.
*/

So sp_executesql does not handle batch separators (i.e. GO).