>Why do you need brackets around the fields when working with SQL Server? I think you only need the brackets if the field name is a reserved word in SQL Server.


Yes, you only need them around reserved words. But, have you seen the reserved words list?? It's very long. And its hard to avoid using some of them. So, a safety-net approach is to surround each table name and field name with [ ]. Problem solved.

SQL Server Management Studio takes this approach any time you use the UI to build a query fo you.

It's just a guaranteed way to be safe.