[KLUG Members] easy DB

[Phillip Hofmeister]

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On Wed, 16 Jun 2004 at 12:13:15AM -0400, Andrew Thompson wrote:
> I disagree. I find it a lot faster and easier to be able to drag and
> drop a field from one table to one in a different table to join them,
> instead of having to type tbl1 JOIN tbl2 ON... all the time, especially
> when I've got two or three different joins in the same query. If you
> already know exactly what SQL you need, sure, it's great, but I find the
> graphical interface to be a real timesaver for designing complex
> queries.

I tend to agree with the first opinion, for a few reasons:

1. SQL is 100% portable, it is almost the same everywhere.  With these
GUIs you have to learn a new GUI wherever you go.

2. Writing the query myself is faster for me.  I know EXACTLY what I
want, I know EXACTLY what I am going to get.  Simple queries and
complex queries are both easy to write once you have become well
rehearsed with SQL.  If you look at the SQL some of the query writers
generate they look like dog cr#p.  I get headaches trying to sort out
the un-needed parens and extra stuff.

3. You don't need to say "JOIN tbl2 ON tbl1.key=tbl2.key".  In MySQL if
both key names are the same you can use the "JOIN tbl2 USING keyname"
syntax, a bit of a shortcut.  Add in that you have tab auto complete and
I don't really see how a GUI could be quicker.

Just my .02.  Not trying to start a holy war.

- -- 
Phillip Hofmeister

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