Joe Celko's Trees and Hierarchies in SQL for Smarties,

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1. sargstuffDec 2023
   goal directed programming is the related non-sql programming paradigm. unicorn/icon[1]

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   Use cases:[2]

   autoparts inventory (book keeping page statics of sales/sales person, parts, inventory on hand, etc)

   internet statistics for through put on all interfaces on group of servers [0]

   --- topic related books:

   Joe Celko has book series 'SQL for Smarties' that covers basic through advanced aggrecation with sql using example queries.

   Joe Celko's 'Trees and Hierarchies in SQL for Smarties' covers some of the ideas related to 'SQL statment returned a database'?

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   [0]: https://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/173044/nested-aggreg...

   [1] : http://unicon.org/

   [2] : https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~tozsu/courses/CS338/lectures/6%20Ne...

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2. osxmanFeb 2017
   Joe Celko's Trees and Hierarchies in SQL for Smarties (book) is a good start for better understanding/defining trees. http://a.co/9eVzvji
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3. sitkackDec 2016
   There is an excellent book on this subject, "Joe Celko's Trees and Hierarchies in SQL for Smarties".
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4. ToddNov 2014
   A good book on the subject is Joe Celko's Trees and Hierarchies in SQL for Smarties.

   http://www.amazon.com/Hierarchies-Smarties-Edition-Kaufmann-...

   He spends a chapter on each of the models outlined in this post: adjacency, path, and nested set models.

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5. jamesmiller5May 2013
   For those interested in sharpening their SQL skills I have found these two books to be a great resource.

   1. Joe Celko's Trees and Hierarchies in SQL for Smarties 2. Joe Celko's Thinking in Sets: Auxiliary, Temporal, and Virtual Tables in SQL

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6. sgarlandMay 2025
   > For example, to store a graph in a RDBMS, the ideal format is probably an adjacency list with a recursive query to iterate it

   I know this was a minor point, but I think it speaks to the overall topic, so I'll poke at it.

   Adjacency lists are perhaps the worst way to store a graph / tree in RDBMS. They may be the easiest to understand, but they have some of the worst performance characteristics, especially if your RDBMS doesn't have Recursive CTEs. This starts to matter at a much lower scale than you might think; several million rows is enough to start showing slowdowns.

   This book [0] (Joe Celko's Trees and Hierarchies in SQL For Smarties) shows many other options, though it does lack the closure table approach [1], which is my preferred approach.

   And here, we come full circle back to the long-held friction between DBs and applications. You start mentioning triggers, and devs flinch, stating that they don't want logic in the DB. In every case I've ever seen, the replacements they come up with is incredibly convoluted and prone to errors, but hey, it's not in the DB. There is no reason to fear triggers, if and only if you treat them the same way that you'd treat code (because it is): added/modified/removed only via PRs, with careful review and testing.

   [0]: https://ia804505.us.archive.org/19/items/0411-pdf-celko-tree...

   [1]: https://dirtsimple.org/2010/11/simplest-way-to-do-tree-based...

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