Modern SQL in PostgreSQL [and Other Databases]

“SQL has gone out of fashion lately—partly due to the NoSQL movement, but mostly because SQL is often still used like 20 years ago. As a matter of fact, the SQL standard continued to evolve during the past decades resulting in the current release of 2011. In this session, we will go through the most important additions since the widely known SQL-92, explain how they work and how PostgreSQL supports and extends them. We will cover common table expressions and window functions in detail and have a very short look at the temporal features of SQL:2011 and the related features of PostgreSQL.”

This is the abstract for the talk I’ve given at FOSDEM in Brussels on Saturday. The PostgreSQL community was so kind to host this talk in their (way too small) devroom—thus the references to PostgreSQL. However, the talk is build upon standard SQL and covers features that are commonly available in DB2, Oracle, SQL Server and SQLite. MySQL does not yet support any of those features except OFFSET, which is evil.

One last thing before going on to the slides: Use The Index, Luke has a shop. Stickers, coasters, books, mugs. Have a look.

Find the slides on SlideShare.