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SQL Antipatterns
book

SQL Antipatterns

by Bill Karwin
June 2010
Intermediate to advanced
328 pages
7h 51m
English
Pragmatic Bookshelf
Content preview from SQL Antipatterns

How to Recognize the Antipattern

If you hear phrases like the following spoken by your project team, treat it as a clue that the Jaywalking antipattern is being employed:

  • “What is the greatest number of entries this list must support?”

    This question comes up when you’re trying to choose the maximum length of the VARCHAR column.

  • “Do you know how to match a word boundary in SQL?”

    If you use regular expressions to pick out parts of a string, this could be a clue that you should store those parts separately.

  • “What character will never appear in any list entry?”

    You want to use an unambiguous separator character, but you should expect that any character might someday appear in a value in the list.

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781680500073Errata Page