TSQL How do you output PRINT in a user defined function?

Basically I want to use PRINT statement inside a user defined function to aide my debugging.

However I'm getting the following error;

Invalid use of side-effecting or time-dependent operator in 'PRINT' within a function.

Can this not be done?

Anyway to aid my user defined function debugging?

Solution 1:

Tip: generate error.

declare @Day int, @Config_Node varchar(50)

    set @Config_Node = 'value to trace'

    set @Day = @Config_Node

You will get this message:

Conversion failed when converting the varchar value 'value to trace' to data type int.

Solution 2:

No, sorry. User-defined functions in SQL Server are really limited, because of a requirement that they be deterministic. No way round it, as far as I know.

Have you tried debugging the SQL code with Visual Studio?