MariaDB and MySQL Common Table Expressions and Window Functions Revealed

© Daniel Bartholomew 2017

Daniel BartholomewMariaDB and MySQL Common Table Expressions and Window Functions Revealedhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-3120-3_3

3. Recursive Common Table Expressions

Daniel Bartholomew¹ 

(1)

Raleigh, North Carolina, USA

 

Recursion is a very useful technique in computer science. Recursive algorithms are well suited for navigating data structures such as trees , where items contain other items that may also contain items, and graphs, which track connections or routes between items. SQL has historically done a poor job with these.

Oracle attempted to add recursive support to SQL in the 1980s with their non-standard CONNECT BY syntax, but this has now been superseded, improved upon, and standardized in the official SQL standard, ...