Beautiful SQL: Lateral Unnesting of Array Columns

Sometimes, SQL can just be so beautiful. One of the less mainstream features in SQL is the array type (or nested collections). In fact, it's so not mainstream that only 2 major databases actually support it: Oracle and PostgreSQL (and HSQLDB and H2 in the Java ecosystem). In PostgreSQL, you can write: CREATE TABLE blogs … Continue reading Beautiful SQL: Lateral Unnesting of Array Columns

The power of REF CURSOR types

Many RDBMS have started implementing support for some sort of CURSOR, REF CURSOR or ARRAY/TABLE types. These types have roughly the same semantics as JDBC's  java.sql.Array and java.sql.ResultSet. In principle, such types can appear anywhere in SQL, even if some RDBMS limit support to a certain functionality subset. What exactly are these types? ARRAY types … Continue reading The power of REF CURSOR types