Occasionally, you want to write a SQL query and fetch a hierarchy of data, whose flat representation may look like this: SELECT id, parent_id, label FROM t_directory; The result might be: |id |parent_id|label | |---|---------|-------------------| |1 | |C: | |2 |1 |eclipse | |3 |2 |configuration | |4 |2 |dropins | |5 |2 |features | … Continue reading How to Turn a List of Flat Elements into a Hierarchy in Java, SQL, or jOOQ
Category: sql
This category contains posts about SQL in general or some RDBMS’s SQL dialect
How to Write a Derived Table in jOOQ
One of the more frequent questions about jOOQ is how to write a derived table (or a CTE). The jOOQ manual shows a simple example of a derived table: In SQL: SELECT nested.* FROM ( SELECT AUTHOR_ID, count(*) books FROM BOOK GROUP BY AUTHOR_ID ) nested ORDER BY nested.books DESC In jOOQ: // Declare the … Continue reading How to Write a Derived Table in jOOQ
The Performance Impact of SQL’s FILTER Clause
I've found an interesting question on Twitter, recently. Is there any performance impact of using FILTER in SQL (PostgreSQL, specifically), or is it just syntax sugar for a CASE expression in an aggregate function? https://twitter.com/Ivan73965858/status/1622487080088600576 As a quick reminder, FILTER is an awesome standard SQL extension to filter out values before aggregating them in SQL. … Continue reading The Performance Impact of SQL’s FILTER Clause
Emulating Window Functions in MySQL 5.7
One of MySQL 8's biggest improvements is the support of window functions. As I always said in conferences, there's SQL before window functions and SQL after window functions. Once you start using them, you'll use them everywhere. Some of you poor souls are unfortunate enough to be stuck on MySQL 5.7, either of your own … Continue reading Emulating Window Functions in MySQL 5.7
LATERAL is Your Friend to Create Local Column Variables in SQL
The standard SQL WITH clause has been tremendously helpful in structuring SQL queries. Instead of nesting everything in unreadable derived tables like this: SELECT actor_id, name, COUNT(*) FROM ( SELECT actor_id, first_name || ' ' || last_name AS name FROM actor ) AS a JOIN film_actor AS fa USING (actor_id) GROUP BY actor_id, name ORDER … Continue reading LATERAL is Your Friend to Create Local Column Variables in SQL
How to Plot an ASCII Bar Chart with SQL
No need for expensive Tableau subscriptions. Ditch Microsoft Excel. Just use native PostgreSQL to quickly visualise your data! Here's an idea I had for a while. As you may know, jOOQ can produce fancy charts from your jOOQ results. But that requires you use jOOQ, and you may not be using jOOQ, because you're not … Continue reading How to Plot an ASCII Bar Chart with SQL
The Many Ways to Return Data From SQL DML
Probably the hardest thing to standardise in SQL is RETURNING data from DML statements. In this article, we'll look at various ways of doing that with jOOQ, in many of jOOQ's supported dialects, and with JDBC directly. How to do it with jOOQ Assuming the usual table from the sakila database: CREATE TABLE actor ( … Continue reading The Many Ways to Return Data From SQL DML
How to Filter a SQL Nested Collection by a Value
I stumbled upon a very interesting question on Stack Overflow about how to use jOOQ's MULTISET operator to nest a collection, and then filter the result by whether that nested collection contains a value. The question is jOOQ specific, but imagine, you have a query that nests collections using JSON in PostgreSQL. Assuming, as always, … Continue reading How to Filter a SQL Nested Collection by a Value
Setting the JDBC Statement.setFetchSize() to 1 for Single Row Queries
An interesting hint by Vladimir Sitnikov has made me think about a new benchmark for jOOQ: https://twitter.com/lukaseder/status/1407662449331949568 The benchmark should check whether single row queries should have a JDBC Statement.setFetchSize(1) call made to them by default. The Javadoc of the method says: Gives the JDBC driver a hint as to the number of rows that … Continue reading Setting the JDBC Statement.setFetchSize() to 1 for Single Row Queries
How to Fetch Sequence Values with jOOQ
A lot of RDBMS support standard SQL sequences of some form. The standard SQL syntax to create a sequence is: CREATE SEQUENCE s; The following is how you could fetch a value from this sequence, using jOOQ, assuming you're using the code generator: // import static com.example.generated.Sequences.*; System.out.println(ctx.fetchValue(S.nextval())); The sequence expression translates to a variety … Continue reading How to Fetch Sequence Values with jOOQ