I am on the other side. Here's why. if you have a very simple join it really makes no difference. On the other hand, when you have 10 tables involved in a 200

I am on the other side. Here's why. if you have a very simple join it really makes no difference. On the other hand, when you have 10 tables involved in a 200 line query, debugging and maintaining the query is directly proportional to how well you can structure it. Breaking the query down into functional, related pieces which can be reviewed and managed separately is the key to maintaining large queries. The way I describe it is this: In C or Perl, the complexity of debugging is linearly proportional to the length of the function. State accumulates during the function and consequently you have to read each line in context with those which came before and after. With well-structured SQL, OTOH, you have something different. You have a set of sub-functions which are each somewhat independent and state does not (usually, outside of specified window functions) accumulate. Because it is declarative, a well structured query can be debugged not as a linked list of statements but as a tree. This is far more efficient. Personally I find a well-structured 200 line SQL query to be far more maintainable than a 50 line Perl function. And if it is really well structured, you could probably push this further out.