Tuple Design Pattern for SQL Server

If your RDBMS doesn't support tuples (just an RDBMS-fancy speak for record), instead of this:

SELECT a,b FROM aTable
WHERE 
    (aTable.a,aTable.b) IN
    
    (SELECT anotherTable.a,anotherTable.b 
    FROM anotherTable
    WHERE anotherTable.IsActive = 1);

You have to do this:

SELECT a,b FROM aTable
WHERE     
    EXISTS
    (
        SELECT *
        FROM anotherTable
        WHERE anotherTable.a = aTable.a AND anotherTable.b = aTable.b
            AND anotherTable.IsActive = 1
    );

I prefer to write it this way though, so as to make the intent clearer:

SELECT a,b FROM aTable
WHERE 
-- (aTable.a,aTable.b) IN -- leave this commented, it makes the intent more clear
    EXISTS
    (
        SELECT anotherTable.a,anotherTable.b -- do not remove this too, perfectly fine for self-documenting code, i.e., tuple presence check
        FROM anotherTable
        WHERE anotherTable.a = aTable.a AND anotherTable.b = aTable.b
        
            AND anotherTable.IsActive = 1 -- put a blank line above, to emphasize that the above condition is filter for the tuple we are looking for
    );

Design patterns are bug reports against your programming language — Peter Norvig

Happy Computing! ツ