Re: consolidation of multiple rows

--CELKO-- wrote:
<..>
>
> No, not quite true. The earliest mention of Nested Sets I found was
> short article in a Nordic or Dutch SQL newsletter in the 1970's or
> early 1980's. After that, I wrote or collected all the standard
> coding tricks for it and brought out a best-seller (well, for a techie
> book; nobody has optioned the film and video rights for a musical).

You don't even remember the name of the (Dutch) guy who invented the nested sets model for representing trees in SQL? He did beat you to publication by several months. After writing his first book on SQL started his own company (still active) that was affiliated to Codd and Date Consultancy.

>
> Just off the top of my head, among other things I popularized (or
> extended):
>
> 1. Original self-join versions of RANK and DENSE_RANK which lead to
> the new OLAP functions.
>
> 2. Use of CASE expressions to replace IF-THEN-ELSE procedural code.

May be in the DBMS arena.
It was however already very popular for many years in the world of Algol and its successors.

>
> 3. Use of CASE expressions in DDL for complex business rules.
>
> 4. Use of a Sequence table to replace WHILE-DO procedural code.
>
> 5. "Celko's Medians" back when Chris Date and I did "Dueling Database"
> articles in DBMS and DBP&D.
>
> 6. "Celko's Relational Division", again back in the DBMS and DBP&D
> days.
>
> 7. Established formatting conventions used by several magazine and
> book publishers. I helps to have some of the first regular magazine
> columns on a topic.

You mean like BNF, also from Algol?

>
> 8. Promoted awareness of ISO Standards and how to use them (8601 and
> 11179 in particular) among working programmers.
>
> 9. Promoted awareness of scales and measurement theory among working
> programmers. Tho in fairness, this has been of more sue to data
> modelers.
>
> 10. Use of Calendar and Report Range tables. Notice that the term
> "Calendar table" stuck.
>
> 11. The term "Auxiliary table" and related programming techniques for
> table-driven as opposed to computational code. Notice that the term
> "Auxiliary table" stuck.
>
> 12. Rediscovery of interpolation to replace computational code (Data
> warehouse statistical uses; you won't see it in the OLTP newsgroups).
>
> 13. The term "Lasagna Code" back in my Software Engineering days.
>
> 14. The phrase "Automobiles, Squids & Britney Spears" has escaped the
> DB world and is showing in other places. That is weird to me.
>
> 15. Worked with several different vendors on their SQL products (most
> of them are gone now).

Hmm, I would rephrase that before putting it on a CV ... ;-)

>
> 16. Served on ANSI X3H2 for a decade.
>
> 17. Wrote one of the only Database books (trade or text) to stay in
> print over ten years.

Over 20 years for the book on SQL by the Dutch guy mentioned above.

>
> 18. Wrote over 800 articles in the trade press.
>
> 19. My original contributions to Data Science is my taxonomy of
> encoding schemes. My taxonomy of key types might also count, but it
> is not that original.
>
> 20. The one project I wish I had time to formalize is the use of
> induction to prove SQL code correct (I am a big fan of Dijkstra, et
> al). I am not sure if anyone else is doing it so that could my PhD
> with it.

Ah, prof. Dijkstra was the one who taught me "Structered Programming". I bet he would have considered the current state of affairs regarding SQL harmful .. ;-)

>
> I'll stop at 20 and get lunch.

Bed time for me.

-- 
Jeroen