Dinesh Asanka has missed out one significant syntax improvement in SQLS2008 in his 2 articles on the subject. That is; the ability to Declare and Assign a value to a Variable in one statement.

According to the “Introduction to the SQL Server 2008 by Peter DeBetta” e-book, now it’s possible to declare & assign a variable as below;

DECLARE
    @someIntVal INT = 1,
    @someStringVal = 'one'

Instead of as below;

DECLARE
    @someIntVal INT,
    @someStringVal varchar(100)
SET @someIntVal INT = 1
SET @someStringVal = 'one'