Re: Efficiency; advanced/future SQL constructs

Steve,

Your answer is a useful one, and provides something that my mind just blanked on when I was trying to answer
Harlan's original complaint.

Of course! Trying to make SQL into the tool that does everything is yet another "silver bullet" solution. After several decades, I shudder whenever I hear "everything can be solved in X. All you have to do is restate the problem in terms that make sense in the X environment (or paradigm, or whatever)"

I have heard this cant so many times, and it always leads to disillusion.

In the case at hand, there are some tools that carry out the kind of aggregation that might be useful. In particular, there are some OLAP tools that aggregate in lots of interesting ways when you "drill up". Of course, to use these tools, you really need a dimensional model for your data. A star schema is an excellent start in this direction.

I'm just rambling. You already made the key point, Steve!

--
Regards,
    David Cressey
    www.dcressey.com