Re: The Sql ranking OVERture

On Apr 20, 3:49 pm, Ed Murphy <emurph...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Rank is a primary concept. Shoehorning it into the concept of a cursor
is like shoehorning NOT IN into NOT EXISTS; just because you can doesn't
mean you should; you should have a good reason to add that complexity.


Thanks for your comments.

Given the idea that Rank is a primary concept I'm suggesting that it's
understandable based on more primitive ones. One of which a cursor
(type). It's where the order in the ranking comes from. Rather than
shoehorning it in it seems to be a case of - if the shoe fits wear
it :) I'm not sure I understand your suggestion of introducing
complexity. . The idea of a cursor seems very basic. One of the themes
of a relational database is to simplify understanding. That's what I
was trying to do though I'm not sure I succeeded:) Behind every
function is an idea. Ranking is no exception.

But this is arguably not a rank; it's an understandable concept, but it
deserves a different name. More to the point, it deserves a practical
example in which you would actually want to do something like this; I
can't think of one offhand.

I'm taking the position that a rose is a rose is a rose. Because the
data doesn't fit within the parameters of the dense rank function is
that reason to call it something else? :)
You may find this post interesting on the subject:

microsoft.public.sqlserver.programming
Oct 30 2007
'Count Occurances in Select Statement'
http://www.themssforum.com/SQLServerDev/Count-Occurances-726289/
.

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