More effective way to write following SQL query - sql

Question

I am writing a query to return a list of articles for the news portal homepage.
Requirement is following.
Each category which needs to be on the homepage needs to display 5 articles by following criteria.
Each category needs to have one article which is main news for the category, followed by 4 most popular news at the time being.
If there is no first news for category set, then display 5 most popular insted.
I wrote a SQL Function which has CategoryID parameter and another SQL procedure which calls that function N Times.
Is there more efficient way to write this query?
Function
CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[Fn_FetchHomepageCategory]
(
-- Add the parameters for the function here
#categoryId int
)
RETURNS #ArticlesToReturn TABLE
( Id int,
Title nvarchar(500),
Slug nvarchar(500),
Summary nvarchar(1500),
IsCategoryFirst bit,
RootCategoryId int,
RootCategory nvarchar(500),
OldFacebookCommentsUrl nvarchar(500),
Icon nvarchar(500),
TopicName nvarchar(500),
MainArticlePhoto nvarchar(500),
FrontPagePhoto nvarchar(500),
PublishDate datetime
)
AS
BEGIN
-- select category first news if any
INSERT INTO #ArticlesToReturn
SELECT TOP 1
ART.Id, ART.Title, ART.InitialTitle, ART.Summary,ART.IsCategoryFirst,
ART.RootCategoryId, CAT.Name, ART.OldFacebookCommentsUrl, ICO.CssClass,
ART.TopicName, ART.MainArticlePhoto, ART.FrontPagePhoto, ART.PublishDate
FROM Articles ART WITH (NOLOCK)
INNER JOIN ArticleViewCountSum AVS WITH (NOLOCK) ON AVS.ArticleId = ART.Id
INNER JOIN Categories CAT WITH (NOLOCK) ON CAT.Id = ART.RootCategoryId
LEFT JOIN ArticleIcons ICO WITH (NOLOCK) ON ICO.Id = ART.IconId
WHERE ART.RootCategoryId = #categoryId
AND ART.PublishDate < GETDATE()
AND ART.Active = 1
AND IsCategoryFirst = 1
-- select 5 most popular by coefficient
INSERT INTO #ArticlesToReturn
SELECT TOP 5
ART.Id, ART.Title, ART.InitialTitle, ART.Summary,ART.IsCategoryFirst,
ART.RootCategoryId, CAT.Name, ART.OldFacebookCommentsUrl, ICO.CssClass,
ART.TopicName, ART.MainArticlePhoto, ART.FrontPagePhoto, ART.PublishDate
FROM Articles ART WITH (NOLOCK)
INNER JOIN ArticleViewCountSum AVS WITH (NOLOCK) ON AVS.ArticleId = ART.Id
INNER JOIN Categories CAT WITH (NOLOCK) ON CAT.Id = ART.RootCategoryId
LEFT JOIN ArticleIcons ICO WITH (NOLOCK) ON ICO.Id = ART.IconId
WHERE ART.RootCategoryId = #categoryId
AND ART.PublishDate < GETDATE()
AND ART.Active = 1
ORDER BY ART.Coefficient DESC
RETURN
END
Stored procedure:
CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[Fetch_HomePageArticles]
AS
BEGIN
-- SET NOCOUNT ON added to prevent extra result sets from
-- interfering with SELECT statements.
SET NOCOUNT ON;
DECLARE #dateNow datetime = GETDATE();
-- first main news
SELECT TOP 1 * FROM Articles
WHERE IsFirst = 1 AND PublishDate < #dateNow
--TODO: featured
SELECT TOP 10 * From Featured
WHERE PublishDate < #dateNow AND Active = 1
ORDER BY PublishDate DESC
SELECT TOP 5 * FROM Fn_FetchHomepageCategory(3)
SELECT TOP 5 * FROM Fn_FetchHomepageCategory(150)
SELECT TOP 5 * FROM Fn_FetchHomepageCategory(1523)
SELECT TOP 5 * FROM Fn_FetchHomepageCategory(1509)
SELECT TOP 5 * FROM Fn_FetchHomepageCategory(1569)
SELECT TOP 5 * FROM Fn_FetchHomepageCategory(1545)
SELECT TOP 5 * FROM Fn_FetchHomepageCategory(1548)
SELECT TOP 5 * FROM Fn_FetchHomepageCategory(67)
END
I tried to modify function to have only one SELECT and included Order BY IsFirstCategory DESC, but query ran much slower then.

Answer 1

One potential improvement would be merging two SELECT clauses in the Fn_FetchHomepageCategory function into one single query by adding a new made-up Coefficient parameter:
SELECT
TOP 5 ART.Id,
ART.Title,
ART.InitialTitle,
ART.Summary,
ART.IsCategoryFirst,
ART.RootCategoryId,
CAT.Name,
ART.OldFacebookCommentsUrl,
ICO.CssClass,
ART.TopicName,
ART.MainArticlePhoto,
ART.FrontPagePhoto,
ART.PublishDate
FROM
Articles ART WITH (NOLOCK)
INNER JOIN ArticleViewCountSum AVS WITH (NOLOCK) ON AVS.ArticleId = ART.Id
INNER JOIN Categories CAT WITH (NOLOCK) ON CAT.Id = ART.RootCategoryId
LEFT JOIN ArticleIcons ICO WITH (NOLOCK) ON ICO.Id = ART.IconId
WHERE
ART.RootCategoryId = #categoryId
AND ART.PublishDate < GETDATE()
AND ART.Active = 1
ORDER BY
CASE IsCategoryFirst
WHEN 1 THEN 1000000
ELSE ART.Coefficient
END DESC
You can replace 1000000 with another big number. Its only point is assigning the highest co-efficiency score possible to the post that have IsCategoryFirst = 1.
Please note that it works fine only if you have only one post with IsCategoryFirst = 1.