with(nolock) or (nolock) – Is there a difference?

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There is no functional difference, but eventually the syntax without WITH will not work. This has been deprecated:

select customer, zipcode from customers c (nolock)

So you should be using this format:

select customer, zipcode from customers c with (nolock)

Not using the WITH keyword for table hints has been deprecated since at least SQL Server 2008. Search the following topic for the phrase Specifying table hints without using the WITH keyword.:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms143729%28SQL.100%29.aspx

(Discussions about whether you should be using nolock at all, of course, are separate. I’ve blogged about them here.)

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