On 4 May 2016 at 06:11, Guyren Howe <guyren@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I've long been frustrated with how most web developers I meet have no idea how to use an SQL database properly. I think I'm going to write a book called Love Your Database, aimed at web developers, that explains how to make their apps better by leveraging the power of SQL in general, and Postgres in particular.
I'm thinking of a section on features of SQL most folks don't know about (CTEs are *way* to hell at the top of that list, but also EXCEPT/INTERSECT and window functions), but much of the book would be about how to do things server side. Benchmarks showing how much faster this can be, but mostly techniques — stored procedures/triggers/rules, views.
I asked a colleague about the advice I often hear stated but seldom justified, that one shouldn't put business rules in the database. He offered that server-side code can be hard to debug.
I'm sure many here would love to see such a book published, maybe some talks on the topic given.
What might I cover that I haven't mentioned? What are the usual objections to server-side code and how can they be met? When *are* they justified and what should the criteria be to put code in Postgres? Any other thoughts? Any other websites or books on the topic I might consult?
TIA
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Hi,
at my previous jobs I was working with many programmers, and almost none of them understood SQL. The problem was even deeper. They didn't want to learn it. When I was working among java programmers, I noticed that they hated SQL, but there was no problem with learning HQL, which in fact is quite similar. I really have no idea why it is like that.
I was thinking about such a book too, I have even started writing that, but the whole set of ideas was always either too large or was a copy of what can be found in other, general programming books. And if programmers don't want to read the other books, and learn basics of SQL from there, then the whole idea seemed useless to me. Of course the other reason of not writing the book was lack of time, as writing a good book requires enormous amount of work.
On the other hand I think that the huge problem with programmers and SQL is changing the mindset. A standard programmer usually has a problem with thinking in sets. Instead she usually thinks in terms of loops, and objects.
When I was giving talks about what not to do in databases, people were either not interested or everything was a surprise for them, even for quite experienced programmers. However after such a talk, or a training, people were still not interested in knowing more, but they were happily learning about programming.
I think it would be great to have a book like that, and I think it should not be only about Postgres. But here is the problem I had with this concept: to describe all the things to a normal programmer, assuming she will be interested, it will need to be quite a huge and complicated book.
Or maybe this book should be about something else, start from an ORM, and show how to translate it to much better SQL, as ORMs are the things programmers usually understand, and they really don't bother that using them can be a bad idea.
regards Szymon Lipiński
