5 ms·

SQL for Web Nerds

71 points by mbowcock 16y ago

ericmsimons 16y ago
Great reference. I come from a lot of MySQL background so this was very informative. I also appreciate the lack of crazy CSS and graphics; it makes the content easier to skim and read. Same reason why I love HN :)
- cd34 16y ago
  I would be surprised if that page wasn't at least 5-6 years old. Philip Greenspun founded ArsDigita which released the software known now as OpenACS. His thought processes were quite interesting and his theory on hiring the top .2% of the programming elite were radical at the time, but, proved to be quite on-the-money. The implosion of that company has been told on the net many different ways, but, some of his methods still hold quite a bit of merit.
  - mechanical_fish 16y ago
    This book is over ten years old. Most of what you see there was in place in mid-2000.
    - toadi 16y ago
      I'v read this around that period. Learned a lot from it.
  - cellularmitosis 16y ago
    Your comments about ArsDigita reminded me of ADUni (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArsDigita_University http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArsDigita_University), which hosted free video lectures of an intensive one-year computer science curriculum. Back in the day I had attempted to download these lectures, but a slow pipe and the large number of lectures / assignments / etc discouraged me from finishing. Lo and behold, the modern era of youtube and google video has seen the resurrection of these videos. Someone named "Chao Xu" has uploaded (nearly) all of the videos to google. see http://mgccl.com/2008/04/06/aduni-videos-now-on-google-video http://mgccl.com/2008/04/06/aduni-videos-now-on-google-video (in fact, there's even a course on databases)
    - mbowcock 16y ago
      You can find most of the coursework from arsdigita here. http://aduni.org/ http://aduni.org/
      - cellularmitosis 16y ago
        also, I just realized archive.org has a complete mirror of all of the lectures, exams, etc. http://www.archive.org/details/arsdigita http://www.archive.org/details/arsdigita EDIT: actually its only the first 8 courses (there are 12 total). EDIT: wrong again; they have all 12 courses, but only list the first 8 on the landing page.
zeynel1 16y ago
"Each table in the database is one spreadsheet. You tell the RDBMS how many columns each row has." If this is not a relational database this is still true. Correct? For instance, Google App Engine, pretends to be not a a table http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4731657/google-app-engine-is-not-creating-table-python/4731741#4731741 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4731657/google-app-engine... but it is still a table with columns and rows.
- steveklabnik 16y ago
  Nope. Key/Value stores don't work this way, document stores don't work this way, graph databases... I don't think work this way.
- btilly 16y ago
  This statement can be true if you don't have an RDBMS. But generally isn't. For instance with Google App Engine there is no way to say, My columns are foo and bar then have it tell you that you've done something wrong when you try to insert something into column baz.
  - zeynel1 16y ago
    I guess I don't understand the distinction then. In the App Engine what is called a Model in the script looks like a table to me. It has rows and it has columns and those rows and columns contain data.
    - btilly 16y ago
      The difference is described in http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/python/datastore/overview.html#Differences_From_SQL http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/python/datastore/overv... with: Unlike traditional relational databases, the App Engine datastore doesn't require data kinds to have a consistent property set (although you can choose to enforce this requirement in your application's code). Here is what they mean by that. In a traditional relational database every table must have a table definition that specifies all of the columns and column types. In the App Engine it is up to the application to supply an implicit table definition. And there is no enforced consistency. If two applications access the same table, they can put entirely unrelated kinds of objects there. (Or, worse yet, put related objects that are just slightly different. Just to confuse you.)

71 points by mbowcock 16y ago

Great reference. I come from a lot of MySQL background so this was very informative. I also appreciate the lack of crazy CSS and graphics; it makes the content easier to skim and read. Same reason why I love HN :)

cd34 16y ago
I would be surprised if that page wasn't at least 5-6 years old. Philip Greenspun founded ArsDigita which released the software known now as OpenACS. His thought processes were quite interesting and his theory on hiring the top .2% of the programming elite were radical at the time, but, proved to be quite on-the-money. The implosion of that company has been told on the net many different ways, but, some of his methods still hold quite a bit of merit.
- mechanical_fish 16y ago
  This book is over ten years old. Most of what you see there was in place in mid-2000.
  - toadi 16y ago
    I'v read this around that period. Learned a lot from it.
- cellularmitosis 16y ago
  Your comments about ArsDigita reminded me of ADUni (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArsDigita_University http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArsDigita_University), which hosted free video lectures of an intensive one-year computer science curriculum. Back in the day I had attempted to download these lectures, but a slow pipe and the large number of lectures / assignments / etc discouraged me from finishing. Lo and behold, the modern era of youtube and google video has seen the resurrection of these videos. Someone named "Chao Xu" has uploaded (nearly) all of the videos to google. see http://mgccl.com/2008/04/06/aduni-videos-now-on-google-video http://mgccl.com/2008/04/06/aduni-videos-now-on-google-video (in fact, there's even a course on databases)
  - mbowcock 16y ago
    You can find most of the coursework from arsdigita here. http://aduni.org/ http://aduni.org/
    - cellularmitosis 16y ago
      also, I just realized archive.org has a complete mirror of all of the lectures, exams, etc. http://www.archive.org/details/arsdigita http://www.archive.org/details/arsdigita EDIT: actually its only the first 8 courses (there are 12 total). EDIT: wrong again; they have all 12 courses, but only list the first 8 on the landing page.

zeynel1 16y ago

"Each table in the database is one spreadsheet. You tell the RDBMS how many columns each row has." If this is not a relational database this is still true. Correct? For instance, Google App Engine, pretends to be not a a table http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4731657/google-app-engine-is-not-creating-table-python/4731741#4731741 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4731657/google-app-engine... but it is still a table with columns and rows.

steveklabnik 16y ago
Nope. Key/Value stores don't work this way, document stores don't work this way, graph databases... I don't think work this way.
btilly 16y ago
This statement can be true if you don't have an RDBMS. But generally isn't. For instance with Google App Engine there is no way to say, My columns are foo and bar then have it tell you that you've done something wrong when you try to insert something into column baz.
- zeynel1 16y ago
  I guess I don't understand the distinction then. In the App Engine what is called a Model in the script looks like a table to me. It has rows and it has columns and those rows and columns contain data.
  - btilly 16y ago
    The difference is described in http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/python/datastore/overview.html#Differences_From_SQL http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/python/datastore/overv... with: Unlike traditional relational databases, the App Engine datastore doesn't require data kinds to have a consistent property set (although you can choose to enforce this requirement in your application's code). Here is what they mean by that. In a traditional relational database every table must have a table definition that specifies all of the columns and column types. In the App Engine it is up to the application to supply an implicit table definition. And there is no enforced consistency. If two applications access the same table, they can put entirely unrelated kinds of objects there. (Or, worse yet, put related objects that are just slightly different. Just to confuse you.)