The best index to a person's character is how he treats people who can't do him any good, and how he treats people who can't fight back.
— Abigail Van Buren, aka Dear Abby
To me, the true beauty of the relational database engine comes from its declarative nature. As a programmer, I simply ask the engine a question, and it answers it. The questions I ask are usually pretty simple; just give me some data from a few tables, correlate it based on a column or two, do a little math perhaps, and give me back information (and naturally ...
