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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 005.133
EAN num: 9780596527990
Format: Illustrated
ISBN number: 0596527993
Label: O'Reilly Media, Ltd.
Manufacturer: O'Reilly Media, Ltd.
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 410
Printing Date: November 21, 2006
Publishing house: O'Reilly Media, Ltd.
Sale Popularity Level: 171844
Studio: O'Reilly Media, Ltd.
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
Whether you're running Access, MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, or PostgreSQL, this book will help you push the limits of traditional SQL to squeeze data effectively from your database. The book offers 100 hacks -- unique tips and tools -- that bring you the knowledge of experts who apply what they know in the real world to help you take full advantage of the expressive power of SQL. You'll find practical techniques to address complex data manipulation problems. Learn how to: - Wrangle data in the most efficient way possible
- Aggregate and organize your data for meaningful and accurate reporting
- Make the most of subqueries, joins, and unions
- Stay on top of the performance of your queries and the server that runs them
- Avoid common SQL security pitfalls, including the dreaded SQL injection attack
Let SQL Hacks serve as your toolbox for digging up and manipulating data. If you love to tinker and optimize, SQL is the perfect technology and SQL Hacks is the must-have book for you.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
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Provide tips on overcoming most common issues in SQL.
Rated by buyers 
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Two problems:
1. Huge quantity of typos and writing and technical errors.
2. It's definitely not "hacking" anything. At best (if it were corrected and proofread) it would be a typical cookbook: a number of loosely connected fragments of code for all kinds of potential scenarios. That's not bad, btw! But hacking it isn't. The word 'hacking' brings to mind an image of a Mad Genius as it were, but this book has absolutely nothing at this level. It's pretty much hum-drum SQL programming -- and I can see how it could be quite useful btw -- provided it didn't have so many egregious errors and typos. Snafus start right from the beginnning, and are at times mind boggling.
The book does have a lot of stuff, most of which is useful -- or rather it would be if you weren't afraid it's got errors in it. You can try of course, you can proofread this book yourself: and, paradoxically, this will be good learning. But personally, when it comes to technical books, I prefer to be able to trust that they're competent and well done, rather than play an amateur editor and try to fix it as I read it.
My recommendation: there's tons of similar stuff, so begin by looking for something else; if still interested, get the book into your hands and read a bit. See if you like it, see if you see errors, see if they bother you. In other words, do not buy this book sight inseen -- chances are high you will be disappointed. I regret that I didn't send this book back; YMMV of course.
Good luck.
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Examples:
1. Hack 11, p. 37. The goal is, I quote, "to show the date on which each customer purchased the most _totalitems_" [a tableful of data shown with columns "customer", "whn" [when, that is], and "totalitems"]. Here's the solution:
SELECT customer, whn, totalitems
FROM orders o1
WHERE o1.whn = (
SELECT MAX(whn)
FROM order o2
WHERE o1.customer = o2.customer
);
Why are we MAX'in on date? The result shows -- no surprises -- the latest date in the table, even though more items were sold on another date.
2. Hack 12, p 38. Here we adjust employee salaries based on their disciplinary record. None of this is important; what we do is produce a new salary which is the old one multiplied by something.
The solution is as follows: first, let's create a view with a calculated field with the new salary so we can look at it:
CREATE VIEW newSalary AS
SELECT id, CASE WHEN COUNT(emp) = 0 THEN salary + 100
WHEN COUNT(emp) > 1 THEN salary - 100
ELSE salary
END AS v
FROM employee LEFT JOIN disciplinary ON (id = emp)
GROUP BY id, salary;
So far so good, however: then we update the table itself, as follows:
UPDATE employee
SET slary = (SELECT v FROM newSalary
WHERE newSalary.id = employee.id)
WHERE id IN (SELECT id FROM newSalary);
Look at the second statement: what is the significance of the last WHERE check?
The newSalary is a *view* on the employee table, and it is a view that does not exclude any records -- so what exactly are we checking now? If you've got a record to update, it is already in ! The view is on the table, it IS the table, it doesn't matter if you look at a record directly in the table or through a view, it's one and the same set element. You can't find a record in the table that's not in the view!
3. Hack 13, "Choose the Right Join Style for Your Relationships", p.42 (typos): in the third paragraph, the reference to 'budget' table should have been to 'staff'; 'TRO2' should have been 'TR01'.
Also, at the very beginning, "When a relationship between tables is optional, you need an OUTER JOIN. When querying over many changes, if you require an OUTER JOIN you sometimes have to change all the other INNER JOINs into OUTER JOINs."
What does this mean? "When a relationship between tables is optional, you need an OUTER JOIN"? This doesn't mean a damn thing. Maybe it should be something like "an existing match" instead of "relationship"? I think so, but who knows...
Rated by buyers 
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I haven't found the book to be extremely useful, but it was a good read, with a few "that's another good way to do that" moments. It did get me interested in researching other topics I wasn't familiar with, bonus. If you work with SQL regularly you'll know a lot of this stuff. It is a fun easy read.
Rated by buyers -
These hacks aren't for the beginning user, but for more advanced users. The authors explain the hacks, which can be written for any of a number of different databases, but then they explain necessary changes to allow a user of a differing db product to use the hacks as well.
MySQL, SQL Server, Postgres, Oracle among the ones covered.
If you are looking to make a step up from a decent database user to a very good one, this is a book for you.
Rated by buyers -
This book is a collection of 100 different hacks, ranging from the simple to the complex. Each hack involves a specific problem that you may have already seen before, but perhaps tackled in a way you wouldn't have considered. Where it is impossible to phrase a statement that is acceptable to all of MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, and PostgreSQL, a form is used that is acceptable to at least two of the four. As MySQL is a relative newcomer, its designers have been able to build in compatibility with many of its competitors. For that reason, MySQL is usually one of the two systems that will accept the statement unchanged. That explains why most of the examples use the MySQL command-line utility. The MySQL examples are based around the version 5.0 release. However, many examples will work with the 4.2 release. Note that some hacks involve features such as referential integrity and transaction isolation, and these are implemented only for InnoDB tables and not for MyISAM tables.
The examples also work for Microsoft SQL Server 2005. The SQL Server 2000 version is good enough for all but those examples that use the RANK( ) function. PostgreSQL and Oracle users should have no problem using this book, and most of the hacks will run unchanged on both systems. Oracle has many so additional features that optimizations are not mentioned. There is also plenty here for Acess users, but none of the required variations are mentioned for that database. The following is the table of contents:
Chapter 1, SQL Fundamentals - This is a gentle introduction to running SQL from the command line and programs. It also touches on simple SQL constructs. Even if you are already comfortable with SQL, you may find the flexibility of the SQL shown to be surprising and instructive.
Hack 1. Run SQL from the Command Line
Hack 2. Connect to SQL from a Program
Hack 3. Perform Conditional INSERTs
Hack 4. UPDATE the Database
Hack 5. Solve a Crossword Puzzle Using SQL
Hack 6. Don't Perform the Same Calculation Over and Over
Chapter 2, Joins, Unions, and Views - The hacks in this chapter concentrate on ways to use more than one table in your SQL. Different strategies are examined and discussed. If you find yourself using subqueries more than JOIN, you may also find the methods for converting subqueries to JOINs helpful.
Hack 7. Modify a Schema Without Breaking Existing Queries
Hack 8. Filter Rows and Columns
Hack 9. Filter on Indexed Columns
Hack 10. Convert Subqueries to JOINs
Hack 11. Convert Aggregate Subqueries to JOINs
Hack 12. Simplify Complicated Updates
Hack 13. Choose the Right Join Style for Your Relationships
Hack 14. Generate Combinations
Chapter 3, Text Handling - This chapter contains a number of hacks focused on efficient and effective text querying.
Hack 15. Search for Keywords Without LIKE
Hack 16. Search for a String Across Columns
Hack 17. Solve Anagrams
Hack 18. Sort Your Email
Chapter 4, Date Handling - Suppose you want to calculate the second Tuesday of each month, or look for trends based on the day of the week. Both calculations are discussed, as well as other hacks involving date processing and report generation techniques.
Hack 19. Convert Strings to Dates
Hack 20. Uncover Trends in Your Data
Hack 21. Report on Any Date Criteria
Hack 22. Generate Quarterly Reports
Hack 23. Second Tuesday of the Month
Chapter 5, Number Crunching - This chapter contains a host of hacks for handling numbers, from report generation to complex spatial calculations. This was my favorite chapter.
Hack 24. Multiply Across a Result Set
Hack 25. Keep a Running Total
Hack 26. Include the Rows Your JOIN Forgot
Hack 27. Identify Overlapping Ranges
Hack 28. Avoid Dividing by Zero
Hack 29. Other Ways to COUNT
Hack 30. Calculate the Maximum of Two Fields
Hack 31. Disaggregate a COUNT
Hack 32. Cope with Rounding Errors
Hack 33. Get Values and Subtotals in One Shot
Hack 34. Calculate the Median
Hack 35. Tally Results into a Chart
Hack 36. Calculate the Distance Between GPS Locations
Hack 37. Reconcile Invoices and Remittances
Hack 38. Find Transposition Errors
Hack 39. Apply a Progressive Tax
Hack 40. Calculate Rank
Chapter 6, Online Applications - Databases can help drive web sites, be directly controlled from a browser, and help close the gap between client and data. This chapter looks at a variety of hacks for using database systems in web-based activities.
Hack 41. Copy Web Pages into a Table
Hack 42. Present Data Graphically Using SVG
Hack 43. Add Navigation Features to Web Applications
Hack 44. Tunnel into MySQL from Microsoft Acess
Hack 45. Process Web Server ... Read More
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