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Optimizing Away a LEFT JOIN in a Pinch

SQL /

A couple years ago the company I worked for had had just launched a free consumer-facing application, and had been pushing it hard on social media. They were seeing hundreds to thousands of active users. It was painfully slow, and the culprit appeared to be the database. One of the main queries on the application was pushing the database server to its limits. Some users […]

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PostgreSQL’s GREATEST (and LEAST) function

SQL /

PostgreSQL has two functions that are not standard SQL, but are very helpful in certain situations : GREATEST and LEAST. In SQL MIN and MAX are aggregate functions that operate across all rows. But there are times where you want the smallest or largest value in a finite number of columns, a scalar min/max. That is where GREATEST and LEAST come in. Both allow for

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