According to Faroult, when the editor of his previous book, The Art of SQL (O'Reilly), raised the idea of writing a book about SQL refactoring, Faroult wasn't sure what he meant. "SQL, I knew, but I had never heard about refactoring," he tells us. "I Googled the word. In a famous play by Moliere, a wealthy but little-educated man who takes lessons in his mature years marvels when he discovers that he has been speaking 'prose' for all his life. Like Monsieur Jourdain, I discovered that I had been refactoring SQL code for years without even knowing it—performance analysis for my customers led quite naturally to improving code through small, incremental changes that didn't alter program behavior.
"It is one thing to try to design a database as best you can, and to lay out an architecture and programs that access this database efficiently," continues Faroult. "It is another matter to try to get the best performance from systems that were not necessarily well designed from the start, or which have grown out of control over the years but that you have to live with." In Refactoring SQL Applications, Faroult and L'Hermite show you how to do just this. You will learn to:
- Determine if and where you can expect performance gains
- Apply quick fixes, such as limiting calls to the database in stored functions and procedures
- Refactor tasks, such as replacing application code by a stored procedure, or replacing iterative, procedural statements with sweeping SQL statements
- Refactor flow by increasing parallelism and switching business-inducted processing from synchronous to asynchronous
- Refactor design using schema extensions, regular views, materialized views, partitioning, and more
- Compare before and after versions of a program to ensure you get the same results once you make modifications
Backed by real-world examples, the book offers quick fixes for simple problems, in-depth answers for more complex situations, and complete solutions for applications with extensive problems.
Refactoring SQL Applications teaches you to recognize and assess code that needs refactoring, and to understand the crucial link between refactoring and performance. If and when your application bogs down, this book will help you get it back up to speed.
For a review copy or more information please email kathrynb@oreilly.com. Please include your delivery address and contact information.
Stephane Faroult first discovered the relational model and the SQL language in 1983.
Pascal L'Hermite has been working with relational databases in OLTP, production and development environments on Oracle Databases for the past 12 years and on Microsoft SQL Server for the past 5 years.
Additional Resources:
For more information about the book, including table of contents, index, author bios, and cover graphic, see the catalog page for Refactoring SQL Applications.
Stephane Faroult , Pascal L'Hermite
ISBN: 9780596514976, 296 pages, Book Price: $44.99 USD, £27.99 GBP
PDF Price: $35.99 USD
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