SQL Antipatterns Strike Back

The database is the foundation of any innovative project, but you can’t innovate if you’re making the same mistakes of yesteryear.

Bill Karwin has supported SQL developers for more than twelve years. Some blunders occur so frequently that we call them antipatterns: brittle, buggy solutions and create security or scalability risks in your projects. In this tutorial, Bill describes SQL techniques that should be called antipatterns, illustrates their weaknesses, and offers better solutions.

This revises Bill’s popular tutorial at MySQL Conference 2008, and adds many new topics. The presentation includes the following topics:

Database Design Antipatterns:

• Entity-Attribute-Value
• Polymorphic Associations (NEW!)
• Storing tree-structure data (NEW!)
• Metadata Tribbles
• Rounding errors in FLOAT
• Using ENUM
• Indexes are Magical (NEW!)
• Using NULL (NEW!)

Query Antipatterns:

• Using GROUP BY ambiguously
• Using HAVING instead of WHERE
• Goldberg Machine queries (NEW!)
• Using JOIN… or Not (NEW!)

Application Development Antipatterns:

• Parameter Facade
• Phantom Side Effects
• See No Evil (NEW!)
• Magic Beans (NEW!)
• Diplomatic Immunity (NEW!)