> > =ex-Navy guys are always "at sea" - however they never let me near the
> ships, but I guess that's another
> > story...
> ex RAF myself (almost 30 years ago though), so I suppose I might be all 'up
> in the air'?
=there's a bunch of fast-mover jockies and helo boys who never have to pay for their
drinks when any of my guys
are around...
> > =correct MySQL does not CURRENTLY have stored procedures, but it is under
> active discussion (too late for us,
> > but then...).
> >
> > =many people have a very shallow understanding of SQL - particularly [he
> says generalising like crazy] people
> > who 'fall into it' from (say) PHP programming. Indeed my own initial
> training course [mumble, mumble] years ago
> > majored on SELECT, charged through INSERT and DELETE, and settled lightly
> on DML. However there is enormous
> > power in the SELECT statement that belies the usual course topics of
> SELECT *... and SELECT colName, colName,
> > ... and a bit of format control/changing the column names/labels. In my
> training course, and many others I've
> > seen since, token gestures are made so that even throwing in MAX(), MIN(),
> and AVG() seems more an illustration
> > of (the more narrow) GROUP BY clause than it does of the SELECT statement.
> [rant, rave,...] This shallow
> > understanding means that 'they' will tend to do too much in PHP (assuming
> they know it better) in preference to
> > SQL - at a cost of efficiency/execution time.
> >
> > =let's make this answer a 'game of two halves': firstly, if you followed
> my earlier point, after producing ELH
> > diagrams, (my)/the next step is to start writing SQL queries. Thus one
> tries to pack as much functionality into
> > the SQL statement, as is possible. Each SQL query will feed some response
> 'back' to the PHP code (that in the
> > finished product, will first call it). Thus if you throw together the
> system's SQL calls in a previous
> > development step, the only PHP functionality required is that which cannot
> be accomplished within MySQL - so my
> > terminology may be flawed/deceptive, it is not that I'm taking stuff out
> of the PHP code (I haven't written any
> > yet/at this stage), it's that it never gets in there in the first place!
> Remember the mantra: prevailing wisdom
> > says that if you have a choice of doing something in SQL or PHP, do it in
> SQL.
> >
> > =there's an interesting problem on the list (in fact both PHP and PHP-DB)
> posed by Brian Tully "need help
> > looping through each record with a query -stumped". It is a much
> smaller/self-contained example than your own.
> > He has presented his 65-line, mainly-PHP code in his statement of the
> problem. It provided a brain-starting
> > challenge for me this morning, and I have opened my big mouth to suggest
> that we could get it down to a much
> > less complex single SQL call and one or two nested loops of PHP. To do
> this, I have requested some clarification
> > of the business rules governing his case. If it suits you, and assuming he
> gets back to me, I will work through
> > it. Could we then use this as an example of how to shift functionality out
> of PHP (the 'middle box') and into
> > SQL (the 'left-hand box')?
>
> Yes, please do. But if I could interject with a sub-concept question. Much
> of what I will be scratching my head about can probably be achieved with SQL
> as it pertains to data held. Can this fuctionality be built into MySQL or is
> it more a case of still doing it all in SQL but the SQL 'script' resides in
> the .php page? Just trying to see the trees instead of the wood.
=Sorry, misunderstood the 'level' of your question/comment...
=Yes you are correct, the SQL code 'resides'/is kept within the PHP code. Borrowing an
example (and editing a
little) from Brian's post:
$query = "SELECT Month, Score FROM scores WHERE Username = '$Username' " ;
$result = mysql_query($query2)
or die( "Cannot execute query" . mysql_error () ) ;
=This is PHP code. The first line of which builds a SQL SELECT statement where the
contents of the PHP variable
$Username will be substituted inside the single quotes, eg
SELECT Month, Score FROM scores WHERE Username = 'George Pitcher'
=The second line throws the query at MySQL and receives two results by return. Firstly
the logical: "did the
call work or not?" which may fire the 'or' clause (returning an error msg and number);
and secondly the handle
of the MySQL resultset. (the next step being to retrieve the actual data, as
required/appropriate from the
resultset)
=So at the code-level, the SQL commands/script is/are contained within the .php page.
=At the logic level, the functionality to retrieve only the single record (that
fulfills the stated criteria)
from amongst all those in the database, is contained within the SQL command.
=but I'm still not sure which one is "wood", and which "trees"!
=Ok now?
=dn
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