SQL Antipatterns Tutorial at the MySQL Conf & Expo 2009

My tutorial proposal was accepted, so I’ll be speaking April 20 at the MySQL Conference & Expo 2009 in Santa Clara.

My tutorial is “SQL Antipatterns Strike Back.” SQL Antipatterns are frequent blunders committed by software developers, both novice and expert.

I gave a similar tutorial last year, and I think it was well-received. I’m keeping and improving the most interesting topics from last year’s tutorial, but over half of this year’s tutorial will be all-new!

The new topics in my tutorial include:

• Polymorphic Associations
• Storing Tree-Structured Data
• Index Shotgun
• Using NULL
• Goldberg Machines
• Using JOIN (…or not)
• See No Evil
• Magic Beans
• Diplomatic Immunity

The improved topics from last year include:

• Entity-Attribute-Value
• Metadata Tribbles
• FLOAT
• ENUM
• Ambiguous GROUP BY
• Using HAVING instead of WHERE
• Parameter Facade
• Phantom Side Effects

Some of these topic names are meant to be mnemonics, just like names of design patterns and anti-patterns. You’ll have to attend the tutorial to see the full meaning of these SQL Antipatterns!