Notes on the Second Edition

Since writing the first edition of this book, I’ve worked as an SQL consultant, trainer, developer, and database administrator. I’ve visited dozens of companies in all sorts of fields of business, all of which use SQL. I’ve talked with other expert developers and database administrators at conferences and meetups, hearing about their successes and failures.

All software developers still work with data, no matter what language or system they use, and SQL is still the dominant language used for data. Since the software development field in general keeps growing, the number of software developers using SQL is always increasing, even as alternative database technologies are also gaining popularity.

The second edition of SQL Antipatterns is updated with the latest observations about common mistakes of SQL and data-driven application development. Feedback about the first edition has been addressed. Internet resources are updated to reference current sites and the latest information.

A number of all-new “mini-antipatterns” appear in between the existing chapters. These briefly cover all-new types of blunders and describe “quick wins” you can use to avoid them.

The code examples are updated to be compatible with the latest versions of MySQL and Python, the most popular open source database and dynamic programming language in today’s technology market.