Good to know I'm not the only SQL junkie out there. So far, I'm making a pretty decent living eliminating thousands of lines of code by leveraging all that SQL

Good to know I'm not the only SQL junkie out there. So far, I'm making a pretty decent living eliminating thousands of lines of code by leveraging all that SQL gives me for free. I continue to be surprised by the number of hackers who don't know SQL well. And when developers say you can only really benefit with RDBMS when you have petabytes of data, I wonder if they haven't worked on apps that are explicitly data-centric. Granted, I spend my work days in apps that are or closely resemble data warehouses, but I can get your standard RDBMS engine to do a tremendous amount of work before I have to touch the first line of procedural code. If it fits your needs, by all means jump feet first into the RDBMS of your choice. When it doesn't fit, know enough to realize it and make a considered decision (seldo, +1 for mentioning the huge number of apps that don't need RDBMS) The point I'm really trying to express is that any hacker that touches a database would probably be well served to spend some minimal amount of effort learning ANSI SQL and understanding basic indexing, basic normal forms, and maybe star schemas. Adding some intermediate SQL and RDBMS skills to your toolbox is just another step towards maximizing your effectiveness as a developer.