Dedication;Preface; Why Another SQL Book?; Audience; Assumptions This Book Makes; Contents of This Book; Conventions Used in This Book; Using Code Examples; Comments and Questions; Safari® Enabled; Acknowledgments;Chapter 1: Laying Plans; 1.1 The Relational View of Data; 1.2 The Importance of Being Normal; 1.3 To Be or Not to Be, or to Be Null; 1.4 Qualifying Boolean Columns; 1.5 Understanding Subtypes; 1.6 Stating the Obvious; 1.7 The Dangers of Excess Flexibility; 1.
8 The Difficulties of Historical Data; 1.9 Design and Performance; 1.10 Processing Flow; 1.11 Centralizing Your Data; 1.12 System Complexity; 1.13 The Completed Plans;Chapter 2: Waging War; 2.1 Query Identification; 2.2 Stable Database Connections; 2.
3 Strategy Before Tactics; 2.4 Problem Definition Before Solution; 2.5 Stable Database Schema; 2.6 Operations Against Actual Data; 2.7 Set Processing in SQL; 2.8 Action-Packed SQL Statements; 2.9 Profitable Database Accesses; 2.10 Closeness to the DBMS Kernel; 2.
11 Doing Only What Is Required; 2.12 SQL Statements Mirror Business Logic; 2.13 Program Logic into Queries; 2.14 Multiple Updates at Once; 2.15 Careful Use of User-Written Functions; 2.16 Succinct SQL; 2.17 Offensive Coding with SQL; 2.18 Discerning Use of Exceptions;Chapter 3: Tactical Dispositions; 3.
1 The Identification of "Entry Points"; 3.2 Indexes and Content Lists; 3.3 Making Indexes Work; 3.4 Indexes with Functions and Conversions; 3.5 Indexes and Foreign Keys; 3.6 Multiple Indexing of the Same Columns; 3.7 System-Generated Keys; 3.8 Variability of Index Accesses;Chapter 4: Maneuvering; 4.
1 The Nature of SQL; 4.2 Five Factors Governing the Art of SQL; 4.3 Filtering;Chapter 5: Terrain; 5.1 Structural Types; 5.2 The Conflicting Goals; 5.3 Considering Indexes as Data Repositories; 5.4 Forcing Row Ordering; 5.5 Automatically Grouping Data; 5.
6 The Double-Edged Sword of Partitioning; 5.7 Partitioning and Data Distribution; 5.8 The Best Way to Partition Data; 5.9 Pre-Joining Tables; 5.10 Holy Simplicity;Chapter 6: The Nine Situations; 6.1 Small Result Set, Direct Specific Criteria; 6.2 Small Result Set, Indirect Criteria; 6.3 Small Intersection of Broad Criteria; 6.
4 Small Intersection, Indirect Broad Criteria; 6.5 Large Result Set; 6.6 Self-Joins on One Table; 6.7 Result Set Obtained by Aggregation; 6.8 Simple or Range Searching on Dates; 6.9 Result Set Predicated on Absence of Data;Chapter 7: Variations in Tactics; 7.1 Tree Structures; 7.2 Representing Trees in an SQL Database; 7.
3 Practical Implementation of Trees; 7.4 Walking a Tree with SQL; 7.5 Aggregating Values from Trees;Chapter 8: Weaknesses and Strengths; 8.1 Deceiving Criteria; 8.2 Abstract Layers; 8.3 Distributed Systems; 8.4 Dynamically Defined Search Criteria;Chapter 9: Multiple Fronts; 9.1 The Database Engine as a Service Provider; 9.
2 Concurrent Data Changes;Chapter 10: Assembly of Forces; 10.1 Increasing Volumes; 10.2 Data Warehousing;Chapter 11: Stratagems; 11.1 Turning Data Around; 11.2 Querying with a Variable in List; 11.3 Aggregating by Range (Bands); 11.4 Superseding a General Case; 11.5 Selecting Rows That Match Several Items in a List; 11.
6 Finding the Best Match; 11.7 Optimizer Directives;Chapter 12: Employment of Spies; 12.1 The Database Is Slow; 12.2 The Components of Server Load; 12.3 Defining Good Performance; 12.4 Thinking in Business Tasks; 12.5 Execution Plans; 12.6 Using Execution Plans Properly; 12.
7 What Really Matters?;PHOTO CREDITS;About the Author;.