Is it beneficial to include ORDER BY fields in the list of SELECT fields? I'm just wondering when you do a query and you use ORDER BY should the fields you use in the ORDER BY clause always be included in the SELECT list even if you don't need them? Is this beneficial in some way?
There is no benefit to including the ORDER BY columns in the SELECT list. On the contrary, having unrequired columns in the SELECT list incurs a fractional overhead in run time and a larger one in maintenance.