RE: SQL Syntax

[Winchester Terry <terry.winchester@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joe Pluta [mailto:joepluta@PlutaBrothers.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, October 29, 2002 12:03 PM
> To: midrange-l@midrange.com
> Subject: RE: SQL Syntax
>
                <snipped for brevity>
>
> Yet, this is the technology we're supposed to base our
> mission critical systems on.  It reminds me of the old
> flow chart we had on the wall at SSA.  We had user input
> at the beginning, and output at the end.   In the middle
> was a big black box labeled "A Miracle Occurs".  That's sort
> of what SQL is like, especially with more complex syntaxes.

I have seen flow charts like that when I worked on the
Univac 1050 -- thanks for the memories :)

> But hey, I'm biased towards native DB2 as we all know.  But
> doesn't this sort of black magic worry ANYBODY else?
>
> Joe

Yes, it also bothers me that I don't know what is going
on behind the scenes.  Currently, our programming staff
(two of us) does not write SQL for a few reasons and
this is one of them.  Its amazing how much *time* you can
spend trying to trouble-shoot SQL performance.  In the
overwhelming majority of cases, I can write the code
in an HLL faster.

However, for the user community its probably the greatest
thing since "sliced bread".  Most don't care about how
things work or how much time it takes for their SQL
queries to run.

Terry