SQL style guide by Simon Holywell
sqlstyle.guide
SQL style guide by Simon Holywell
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Re: SQL style guide by Simon Holywell
#2Page title: SQL Style Guide, discussions in:
2018 (59 points, 16 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17924917
2016 (257 points, 147 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12671667
2015 (16 points, 10 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9941150
Re: SQL style guide by Simon Holywell
#3I've stopped using aliases in the SQL I write and it's dramatically increased the clarify.
From this style guide, the aliases section would look like this in my style guide:
SELECT first_name
FROM staff
JOIN students
ON students.mentor_id = staff.staff_num;Re: SQL style guide by Simon Holywell
#4Not bad advice. The one about “where possible avoid simply using id as the primary identifier for the table” stood out to me. In the past with multiple ORMs (ya, ya, we all hate them) the default was to map to a column named id. Also when doing joins its cleaner to use the table_name.id or alias.id then table_name.table_name_id or alias.table_name_id or whatever else besides id is used. The best is when multiple people have worked on the project over the years and the columns are a combo of camel, snake, camel_snake, all UPPER / lower. Must look at the table definitions or ERD every time you want to write some non-trivial query. So having a consistent style guide is better than having any one specific style guide. This would be a good starting point and adjust with your team as needed.
Re: SQL style guide by Simon Holywell
#5I’m probably alone in this, but I dislike naming tables in plural.
IMO, reading “SELECT employee.first_name” makes much more sense than “SELECT staff.first_name”.
Re: SQL style guide by Simon Holywell
#6I've stopped using aliases in the SQL I write and it's dramatically increased the clarify. From this style guide, the aliases section would look like this in my style guide: SELECT first_name FROM staff JOIN students ON students.mentor_id = staff.staff_num;
If the table names are all short one word like that, they are already basically aliases. What do you do when you end up on some legacy project (you did not make the schema) where_the_table_names_look_like_this? Seems some sort of alias might be more appropriate. Also, when you are writing longer / sub queries or using Common Table Expressions it’s impossible to not use an alias.
Re: SQL style guide by Simon Holywell
#7I’m probably alone in this, but I dislike naming tables in plural. IMO, reading “SELECT employee.first_name” makes much more sense than “SELECT staff.first_name”.
Yes, you are indeed alone in this
Re: SQL style guide by Simon Holywell
#8Great document to feed to GPT while ensuring it writes code :)
Re: SQL style guide by Simon Holywell
#9Not bad advice. The one about “where possible avoid simply using id as the primary identifier for the table” stood out to me. In the past with multiple ORMs (ya, ya, we all hate them) the default was to map to a column named id. Also when doing joins its cleaner to use the table_name.id or alias.id then table_name.table_name_id or alias.table_name_id or whatever else besides id is used. The best is when multiple peop…
I have found that naming ids as _id helps downstream code when trying to figure out which thing's id you are dealing with. It also helps with avoiding renaming fields when a structure contains multiple ids.
I do agree it makes joins more verbose.
Re: SQL style guide by Simon Holywell
#10I’m probably alone in this, but I dislike naming tables in plural. IMO, reading “SELECT employee.first_name” makes much more sense than “SELECT staff.first_name”.
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