We're going through a round of sql-server stored procedure optimizations. The one recommendation we've found that clearly applies for us is 'SET NOCOUNT ON' at the top of each procedure. (Yes, I've seen the posts that point out issues with this depending on what client objects you run the stored procedures from but these are not issues for us.)

So now I'm just trying to add in a bit of common sense. If the benefit of SET NOCOUNT ON is simply to reduce network traffic by some small amount every time, wouldn't it also make sense to turn off all the PRINT statements we have in the stored procedures that we only use for debugging?

I can't see how it can hurt performance. OTOH, it's a bit of a hassle to implement due to the fact that some of the print statements are the only thing within else clauses, so you can't just always comment out the one line and be done. The change carries some amount of risk so I don't want to do it if it isn't going to actually help.

But I don't see eliminating print statements mentioned anywhere in articles on optimization. Is that because it is so obvious no one bothers to mention it?