SQL Hacks

Preface

Now and again you have a go at something outside your area of expertise. It could be car maintenance and gardening. Maybe you can do a bit of both, but you are not a professional in either one of them. This means that a trivial but insurmountable problem can hold you up; there’s a bolt that you can’t get to with your spanner or a tree root that you just can’t shift. When you give up and hire an expert you are impressed. The mechanic’s got 20 spanners and he knows which one will do the job; he also knows how to use his tools. The professional gardener isn’t scratching his head because he’s stuck; he knows half a dozen different ways to get that tree root out. He’s just trying to decide which one will require him to expend the least effort.

If you are that mechanic who’s already got 20 spanners for every job, the hacks in this book will add a few more to your collection. We know that getting the bolt off is just the start of the job; it’s once that bolt comes off that your work actually begins. We’re hoping that some of the tricks in this book will give you more tools for your toolkit, and the confidence to apply databases and SQL to new, interesting, and challenging problems.

If you are not an expert yet, and just an amateur getting started, proceed with caution. Some of the techniques in here can lead to trouble if you don’t know what you are doing. This book is not overly concerned with good database design and sticking to the rules; we’re hoping you know all those things ...