One of my standard questions I ask when interviewing a candidate with some database or SQL know how is: Assume you have a fairly complex select statement operating on some serious tables (tens of millions of rows). The customer complains the SQL statement is to slow. What options would you consider for tuning such a [...]
This is not a joke! I am serious, I like SQL for the following reasons: SQL is declarative, which as a side effect means there are now corner cases hidden in if … then … else constructs. In practice this means, that once a SQL statement is working for a couple of cases, it is [...]
About two weeks ago at work we discussed different strategies on testing databases. Although there are ways to do it, they are all more or less painful. And finally we all parted in agreeing: (SQL) databases suck, SQL sucks and testing databases and SQL sucks as well. We are only testing this crap because the [...]
