Joe Celko's SQL for Smarties

Joe Celko's SQL Puzzles and Answers

Joe Celko's SQL Programming Style

Joe’s great work ‘SQL for Smarties’ is one of those books on SQL that everyone should buy. There are gaps in the knowledge of every database expert, and Joe’s book focuses on the real problems of writing satisfactory and efficient SQL code. It is impossible not to learn new things from reading, or re-reading his book. Joe Celko is often pedantic, strident in his views, or iconoclastic, but never bland or dull. He is also generally right. Joe’s great work grew from his magazine articles, and is honed from his own practical experience. Joe has written a huge amount over the years, and a great deal of what is now considered ‘conventional wisdom’ started out in a column written by Joe. So great has been his output that there was even a forum debate as to whether he was a real person or a committee writing under a pseudonym. It is typical of Joe that he launched into this debate as with so many others, with gusto and strong opinions.

Joe’s latest book ‘SQL Programming Style’ should be on every Database Administrator’s bookshelf as it summarises all the public standards for SQL. Of particular interest is the naming standards. Joe does not set out to define best practice by dictat, he takes what consensus there is, together with the work of psychologists and builds on this existing body of best-practice and knowledge.

If Joe has a fault, it is that he has become too engrossed in the technical forums, and a lot of his latest book is preoccupied with the errors of ‘Newbies’ and the way that the forums are abused. Those of us who are less keen on Forums would prefer to read more about the ‘strategic’ issues, such as coding standards, interoperability, distributed transactions, and the evolution of the SQL language standards.