[thelist] SQL query help

[rudy]

> ... unfortunately, you had to link the sales order
> table back into itself - at FIVE different connect points - in order to
> extract detailed sales order data ... which kind of made 'on the fly'
> queries a ridiculous exercise in futility. [Try keeping your field names
> straight when you've got five references to the same table. Ugh!]}

hi ron

i know exactly what you're talking about, and you're right

by the way, keeping column names stright in a five-way self join is easy,
just alias your tables a, b, c, d, and e   ;o)

>(Gee - and next we can talk about whether to have half a dozen "generic"
>tables drive all your reports ... or have a zillion "specialty" tables
>unique to each report.  One is more 'productive' for minimizing
>development time.  One is more 'productive' for minimizing end user
>report latency.  When to tip the scale in which direction?)

efficient reporting is an art, not a science

there's nothing wrong with redundancy for reporting purposes, although
keeping redundant tables in sync with the "real" tables eventually becomes
a procesisng nightmare itself

rudy