Re: Nested sets in SQL - inventor?

David Cressey wrote:
> "Marshall Spight" <marshall.spight_at_gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1122529011.244856.250850_at_g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
> > I'm still trying to wrap my head around recursive queries; they
> > are a fairly new thing to think about, and I don't have a good
> > model for how they are implemented. The 'recursive with' mentioned
> > recently makes me think it's going to build the whole recursively
> > defined set in advance of the select, but I expect that's probably
> > not right.
>
> Take advantage of this moment of ignorance. It won't come again. Once you
> wrap your head around the "how" your vision of the "what" will be more
> cloudy than it is now.
>
> One of the consistent failures we all make is to deal with the "what rather
> than how".

Argh! This is plainly excellent advice. It's quite ironic for me to get it, because these days I'm working with a lot of less experienced engineers, and I'm always chiding them for applying all their mental energy to implementation and nothing into thinking about interface or model or concept or whatever.

How funny to receive the exact advice one is dispensing on a daily basis, and how amusing, in a self-deprecating way, to realize that one wasn't following one's own best practices.

Thanks! I hereby resolve to build a full conceptual model of recursive queries before moving on to implementation.

Marshall Received on Fri Jul 29 2005 - 06:41:21 CEST