Is the SQL WHERE clause short-circuit evaluated?
From the above, short circuiting is not really available.
If you need it, I suggest a Case statement:
Where Case when Expr1 then Expr2 else Expr3 end = desiredResult
Expr1is always evaluated, but only one of Expr2 and Expr3 will be evaluated per row.
ANSI SQL Draft 2003 5WD-01-Framework-2003-09.pdf
6.3.3.3 Rule evaluation order
[...]
Where the precedence is not determined by the Formats or by parentheses, effective evaluation of expressions is generally performed from left to right. However, it is implementation-dependent whether expressions are actually evaluated left to right, particularly when operands or operators might cause conditions to be raised or if the results of the expressions can be determined without completely evaluating all parts of the expression.
I think this is one of the cases where I'd write it as if it didn't short-circuit, for three reasons.
Because for MSSQL, it's not resolved by looking at BOL in the obvious place, so for me, that makes it canonically ambiguous.
because at least then I know my code will work. And more importantly, so will those who come after me, so I'm not setting them up to worry through the same question over and over again.
I write often enough for several DBMS products, and I don't want to have to remember the differences if I can work around them easily.