SQL views are aluring as a means of abstraction; a “building block” to hide away commonly used complexity. It is no wonder then that us developers will try them out, and before you know it, your clever recursive CTE view on that hierarchy is used everywhere, by everyone, but how is it affecting overall database performance… They look like tables, can be joined on, selected from, and in some cases even updated just like tables, yet the reality is that they are not like tables. Read More...
This article examines how sub queries can be substituted for the far more readable common table expressions, or CTEs available in many RDBMS systems. I was motivated to write this article when a friend who is fairly new to SQL expressed difficulty in grasping queries containing nested sub queries. If you’ve never heard of CTEs before and you want to get the most out of this article, I recommend you get AdventureWorks2014 sample database and experiment a little with the queries below. Read More...