Writing more legible SQL
craigkerstiens.com
Writing more legible SQL
1–10 of 168 posts
Re: Writing more legible SQL
#2Am I the only one to see or missing obviously. The following is wrong, where clause has table name (baz)?
SELECT foo,
bar
FROM baz
WHERE foo > 3
AND baz = 'craig.kerstiens@gmail.com'
Re: Writing more legible SQL
#3I loathe wide lines. I think it's much easier to mentally parse vertical lists of things and I write my SQL much like this.
In PHP / Python / Go when inlining SQL I also line up sequential items indentation with spaces (which most editors do by default when hitting enter inside a multi line string).
Nice to see this codified. I really just wish I would have worked more in my career on teams that care as much about readability and comprehension in 6+ months as I do.
Hopefully more people will follow the advice in the article and write cleaner, easier to mentally parse SQL.
Re: Writing more legible SQL
#4I prefer keywords in their own line eg:
SELECT
foo, bar, blah
FROM
baz
WHERE
foo > 3
AND
blah = 'dont use baz'
Re: Writing more legible SQL
#5Am I the only one to see or missing obviously. The following is wrong, where clause has table name (baz)? SELECT foo, bar FROM baz WHERE foo > 3 AND baz = 'craig.kerstiens@gmail.com' Edit: Technically you can have a column name exactly same as table name, however I am finding it hard to find difference between the two queries presented.
Yeah, definitely a typo in the example, will fix.
Re: Writing more legible SQL
#6If you're in the world of Microsoft SQL Server:
2. SSMS plug-in: http://architectshack.com/PoorMansTSqlFormatter.ashx#Downloa...
Your life reading and saving SQL will change forever.
Re: Writing more legible SQL
#7Would have been useful to see some thinking on joins and the naming conventions when you have the same column in both tables
Re: Writing more legible SQL
#8I prefer my own style where comma is placed before every column. It makes columns, subqueries and case expressions line up nicely, especially when you have 15 columns or more.
Re: Writing more legible SQL
#9I prefer my own style where comma is placed before every column. It makes columns, subqueries and case expressions line up nicely, especially when you have 15 columns or more.
Yeah, I've definitely seen this and tried it myself. Visually for some reason, it just pains me too much. It does make removing lines much easier though so I can understand the appeal.
Re: Writing more legible SQL
#10Here is how I write SQL:
select
t1.col1,
t2.col2,
t3.col3
from table1 t1
join table2 t2 on t1.col2 = t2.col1
join table3 t3 on
t1.col3 = t3.col1 and
t3.col2 = something_else
where
t1.col1 > 0 and
t2.col2 t1.col4
order by col2
limit 100
1. SQL capitalization is not sacred. I lowercase everything.
2. I just indent subclauses, with four spaces, like I indent other languages. I don't go out of my way to line up things vertically.
3. Conjunctions like "and" are put at the end of a line, like a comma, not at the beginning. I think it lines things up better vertically.
4. I try to keep lines short, but I also try to keep it from getting needlessly long vertically. So if the statement is short and simple, I might fold some things back onto one line, like:
select col1, col2, col3
from table1
where col1 = something_or_other
select * from table1 where col1 = something