where clause short circuit? (sybase)
Generally, SQL is declarative. That is, you say "what you want" not "how to do it". One consequence of this is that you don't control what order things are processed or evaluated in at the same logical processing step (WHERE clause or GROUP BY clause etc are these steps)

That is, SQL doesn't generally short circuit because the concept doesn't apply.

There are several cases where it does (SQL Server and CASE for example) of course, but in your example you'd need the 2nd option to guarantee it. Note SQL Server has an optimisation for this kind of query but I'd assume Sybase doesn't