Practical SQL: The Sequel - Softcover

Bowman, Judith S.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0201616386 ISBN 13: 9780201616385

Publisher: Addison Wesley, 2000

Synopsis

In the real world, the SQL challenges you're likely to face go far beyond the "generic" basics taught by most books. Whether you're maintaining existing SQL code, enhancing it, or writing entirely new applications, you need to review all kinds of SQL, understand what's going on "under the hood," and translate SQL's features into real tools for solving problems. In Practical SQL: The Sequel, Judith Bowman builds on her best-selling Practical SQL, delivering techniques and code you can use right now to write queries that solve even your most complex problems. Organized around categories of problems -- not abstract SQL features -- Practical SQL: The Sequel includes extensive proven code that has been tested against multiple leading RDBMS systems. Bowman offers detailed solutions for controlling data displays using character, number, and date functions; cleaning dirty data; and translating values using a variety of methods. There's a full chapter on managing multiples. Finally, Bowman presents numbering solutions, and techniques for tuning queries. An extensive sample database is included, along with a single source reference containing information about leading SQL dialect variants. For every intermediate-to-advanced level database and business professional who wants to use SQL more effectively.

About this title

About the Author

Judith S. Bowman has been a database professional since the early 1980s. She is currently an independent consultant specializing in SQL and relational database issues and is the author of Practical SQL: The Sequel (Addison-Wesley, 2001).

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From the Back Cover

Written by the author of the best-selling Practical SQL Handbook, Practical SQL: The Sequel picks up where the first book leaves off. It goes beyond basic SQL query structure to explore the complexities of using SQL to everyday business needs. It will help you make the transition from classroom to reality, where you must design, fix, and maintain imperfect SQL systems.

For those who are working with SQL systems--or preparing to do so--this book offers information organized by use rather than by feature. Therefore, readers can turn to specific business problems and learn how to solve them with the appropriate SQL features. In particular, the book focuses on the real-world challenges of dealing with legacy systems, inherited problematic code, dirty data, and query tuning for better performance.

The following important topics are addressed:

• Finding and fixing dirty data with LIKE, BETWEEN, and LOCATE
• Managing multiples and other complex data problems with ROWID, SIMILAR, GROUP BY, and HAVING
• Handling the multiple display formats of dates
• Translating values to expand compressed codes with CASE, DECODE, point functions, UNION, and subqueries
• Manipulating numbers, including using auto-numbering mechanisms, finding the high value, locating every Nth, and more.
• Tuning queries for enhanced performance, focusing on indexes and the optimizer
• Comparing vendors' system catalogs and system functions
• Using SQL to generate SQL for cleanup and permission scripts as well as creating test data

A business-based working database serves as a running example throughout the book. It provides the context for numerous code samples, all of which are tested on multiple systems, including Adaptive Server Anywhere, Oracle, Informix, Microsoft SQL Server, and Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise. The accompanying CD-ROM contains the full sample database as well as Adaptive Server Anywhere.

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Edition details

• Publisher: Addison Wesley
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0201616386
• ISBN 13: 9780201616385
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352