oreilly sql cookbook

You know the rudiments of the SQL query language, yet you feel you aren't taking full advantage of SQL's expressive power. You'd like to learn how to do more work with SQL inside the database before pushing data across the network to your applications. You'd like to take your SQL skills to the next level.

Let's face it, SQL is a deceptively simple language to learn, and many database developers never go far beyond the simple statement: SELECT columns FROM table WHERE conditions. But there is so much more you can do with the language. In the SQL Cookbook, experienced SQL developer Anthony Molinaro shares his favorite SQL techniques and features. You'll learn about:

• Window functions, arguably the most significant enhancement to SQL in the past decade. If you're not using these, you're missing out



• Powerful, database-specific features such as SQL Server's PIVOT and UNPIVOT operators, Oracle's MODEL clause, and PostgreSQL's very useful GENERATE_SERIES function



• Pivoting rows into columns, reverse-pivoting columns into rows, using pivoting to facilitate inter-row calculations, and double-pivoting a result set



• Bucketization, and why you should never use that term in Brooklyn.



• How to create histograms, summarize data into buckets, perform aggregations over a moving range of values, generate running-totals and subtotals, and other advanced, data warehousing techniques



• The technique of walking a string, which allows you to use SQL to parse through the characters, words, or delimited elements of a string

Written in O'Reilly's popular Problem/Solution/Discussion style, the SQL Cookbook is sure to please. Anthony's credo is: "When it comes down to it, we all go to work, we all have bills to pay, and we all want to go home at a reasonable time and enjoy what's still available of our days." The SQL Cookbook moves quickly from problem to solution, saving you time each step of the way.

This unique cookbook contains a wealth of solutions to problems that SQL programmers face all the time. The recipes inside range from how to perform simple tasks, like importing external data, to ways of handling issues that are more complicated, like set algebra. Authors Ales Spetic and Jonathan Gennick, two authorities with extensive database and SQL programming experience, include a discussion with each recipe to explain the logic and concepts underlying the solution.

SQL (Structured Query Language) is the closest thing to a standard query language that currently exists, and Transact-SQL -- a full-featured programming language that dramatically extends the power of SQL -- is the procedural language of choice for both Microsoft SQL Server and Sybase SQL Server systems. The Transact-SQL Cookbook is designed so you can use the recipes directly, as a source of ideas, or as a way to learn a little more about SQL and what you can do with it. Topics covered include:

• Audit logging. In addition to recipes for implementing an audit log, this chapter also includes recipes for: improving performance where large log tables are involved; supporting multiple-languages; and simulating server push.
• Hierarchies. Recipes show you how to manipulate hierarchical data using Transact-SQL.
• Importing data. This chapter introduces concepts like normalization and recipes useful for working with imported data tables.
• Sets. Recipes demonstrate different operations, such as how to find common elements, summarize the data in a set, and find the element in a set that represents an extreme.
• Statistics. This chapter?s recipes show you how to effectively use SQL for common statistical operations from means and standard deviations to weighted moving averages.
• Temporal data. Recipes demonstrate how to construct queries against time-based data.
• Data Structures. This chapter shows how to manipulate data structures like stacks, queues, matrices, and arrays.

With an abundance of recipes to help you get your job done more efficiently, the Transact-SQL Cookbook is sure to become an essential part of your library.