If Exists condition errors out

Question

I am using a cursor and I am trying to check if the record exists and assign it to a variable at the same time , but for some reason it is erroring out. -Incorect sintaxsis near '='

IF EXISTS( SELECT TOP 1 @Event=[se.EventTest] FROM Test)

Answer 1

You cannot do variable assignment in IF EXISTS. You could do this:

SELECT @event = NULL
SELECT TOP 1 @event = "se.EventTest" FROM Test
IF @event IS NOT NULL
BEGIN 
   ...

Note that you need to set the variable to NULL before the assignment, because if SELECT does not hit any rows, @event will retain it's value and will not be set to NULL.