Multi-statement Table Valued Function vs Inline Table Valued Function

In researching Matt’s comment, I have revised my original statement. He is correct, there will be a difference in performance between an inline table valued function (ITVF) and a multi-statement table valued function (MSTVF) even if they both simply execute a SELECT statement. SQL Server will treat an ITVF somewhat like a VIEW in that it will calculate an execution plan using the latest statistics on the tables in question. A MSTVF is equivalent to stuffing the entire contents of your SELECT statement into a table variable and then joining to that. Thus, the compiler cannot use any table statistics on the tables in the MSTVF. So, all things being equal, (which they rarely are), the ITVF will perform better than the MSTVF. In my tests, the performance difference in completion time was negligible however from a statistics standpoint, it was noticeable.

In your case, the two functions are not functionally equivalent. The MSTV function does an extra query each time it is called and, most importantly, filters on the customer id. In a large query, the optimizer would not be able to take advantage of other types of joins as it would need to call the function for each customerId passed. However, if you re-wrote your MSTV function like so:

CREATE FUNCTION MyNS.GetLastShipped()
RETURNS @CustomerOrder TABLE
    (
    SaleOrderID    INT         NOT NULL,
    CustomerID      INT         NOT NULL,
    OrderDate       DATETIME    NOT NULL,
    OrderQty        INT         NOT NULL
    )
AS
BEGIN
    INSERT @CustomerOrder
    SELECT a.SalesOrderID, a.CustomerID, a.OrderDate, b.OrderQty
    FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader a 
        INNER JOIN Sales.SalesOrderHeader b
            ON a.SalesOrderID = b.SalesOrderID
        INNER JOIN Production.Product c 
            ON b.ProductID = c.ProductID
    WHERE a.OrderDate = (
                        Select Max(SH1.OrderDate)
                        FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader As SH1
                        WHERE SH1.CustomerID = A.CustomerId
                        )
    RETURN
END
GO

In a query, the optimizer would be able to call that function once and build a better execution plan but it still would not be better than an equivalent, non-parameterized ITVS or a VIEW.

ITVFs should be preferred over a MSTVFs when feasible because the datatypes, nullability and collation from the columns in the table whereas you declare those properties in a multi-statement table valued function and, importantly, you will get better execution plans from the ITVF. In my experience, I have not found many circumstances where an ITVF was a better option than a VIEW but mileage may vary.

Thanks to Matt.

Addition

Since I saw this come up recently, here is an excellent analysis done by Wayne Sheffield comparing the performance difference between Inline Table Valued functions and Multi-Statement functions.

His original blog post.

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