Optimizing Transact-SQL : Advanced Programming Techniques (Paperback)

~ (Author), Anatoly Abramovich (Author), Eugene Birger (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Encoded characteristic functions (ECF) is a new, innovative SQL programming methodology which allows programmers to encode conditional logic as scalar expressions within certain clauses. These extremely powerful techniques are presented by the authors of ECF in "Optimizing Transact-SQL".

Product Details

• Paperback: 132 pages
• Publisher: SQL Forum Press (October 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0964981203
• ISBN-13: 978-0964981201
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #191,413 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential Techniques to Master, September 30, 1998

By	[e-mail] (Silicon Valley, USA) - See all my reviews

This book provides the definitive approach for the cross-tabulation/row positioning problem. The techniques presented in this book will stimulate new and innovative approaches to improve performance. This is not a How-To Cookbook. Every time I re-read this book, I find ideas and inspiration to help me solve today's programming challenge. If you develop stored procedures, you must have this book.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A different take on SQL, June 27, 2000

By	"dshastri" (Bridgewater, NJ) - See all my reviews

I have been developing SQL for quite a long time but never had looked at the "Characteristc" functions from the angle as this book depicts. The book is not for faint hearted, and even though it looks a very small book, it takes a lot longer to read and digest. Almost all the pivoting technics in the book are now made kinda obsolete because of the support of "CASE" statements, but still it's worth reading as it uses the normal functions like index to do something which you didn't expect. This is not a beginners book nor does it teach you how to optimize by tweaking SQLServer. The title of the book is not right as it talks about Transact-SQL, the technics are applicable in any RDBMS (I am using Teradata for instance).

Give this book more than one try to understand what it is saying, then only you will appreciate it's value.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Good ideas but not necessarily practical, June 3, 1999

By A Customer

The idea of "characteristic function" (or more commonly know as delta function with function value equals to 1 at a specified input value and 0 elsewhere) is interesting. But with the new SQL "CASE" statement, one can do away with this delta function. The book also presented the "power of product join" where one can use self product join to achieve results (such as finding the median) with one SQL pass as opposed to traditional multiple passes approaches. While the idea is interesting and innovative, the implementation may not be practical for large tables. If fact, it is much more efficient to find the median by multiple passes than self product join realizing that product join creates N square temporary rows. Unless one have unlimited time and computer resources (or extremely small table), the implementation of proeuct join is just not practical.

In sum, the book does present some interesting ideas. But a lot of the ideas may be either out of date or inpractical. On top of that, the book is over priced.