At 9:07 PM -0500 1/24/07, Robert Cummings wrote:
Dear Mr Lynch, normally I highly respect your commentary on the list, but today I think you've been-a-smoking the crackpipe a tad too much.There is no way in hell one long line of SQL is easier to read than formatted SQL that clearly delineates the clause structure. SELECT A.field1 AS afield1, A.field2 AS afield2, B.field1 AS bfield1, B.field2 AS bfield2, C.field1 AS cfield1, C.field2 AS cfield2, D.field1 AS dfield1, D.field2 AS dfield2 FROM tableA as A LEFT JOIN tableB AS B ON B.fee = A.foo LEFT JOIN tableC AS C ON C.fii = B.fee LEFT JOIN tableD AS D ON D.fuu = C.fii WHERE A.foo = 'someValue' ORDER BY afield1 ASC, cfield2 ASC The above line "should" be on one line, but my email client might autowrap it. Either way, the following is formatted and is much clearer. SELECT A.field1 AS afield1, A.field2 AS afield2, B.field1 AS bfield1, B.field2 AS bfield2, C.field1 AS cfield1, C.field2 AS cfield2, D.field1 AS dfield1, D.field2 AS dfield2 FROM tableA as A LEFT JOIN tableB AS B ON B.fee = A.foo LEFT JOIN tableC AS C ON C.fii = B.fee LEFT JOIN tableD AS D ON D.fuu = C.fii WHERE A.foo = 'someValue' ORDER BY afield1 ASC, cfield2 ASC While the above is contrived, most of us know such examples happen quite often in the wild. Not only is it easier to read, but the task of adding or removing selected fields is trivial. Cheers, Rob.
Ahem to that! You're on a roll brother -- keep going. Can I get another Ahem?! tedd -- ------- http://sperling.com http://ancientstones.com http://earthstones.com -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
