RE: SQL Performance Question

["mlazarus@xxxxxxxx" <mlazarus@xxxxxxxx>]

Joe,

> I wasn't going to say anything, but you're the one who brought it up.
This
SQL statement is basically the equivalent of eight CHAINs.  It would have
taken what, ten or fifteen minutes to write in RPG?  If it would have taken
more than fifteen minutes, it's not RPG's fault, but let's be generous and
say an hour.

 My experience is that as the SQL statement becomes longer and more complex
it gets much more difficult to read, debug, test and maintain.  Plus it's a
lot harder to tweak performance than the equivalent functionality in RPG.

 Then if you do the job right and put in the case statements to test for
any missing records (to populate default values, etc.), then you've got
code that probably took MUCH longer to write and is more difficult to read.


> I'd love to hear from anybody out there - did this decision make fiscal
sense for Zak's employer?

 Not unless the purpose was to practice his SQL skills, IMHO.

 -mark

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