st's blog

Types of joins in SQL (cheatsheet for beginners)

Submitted by st on

This article is used in my book "Programming with databases".

Better to see once than to hear a hundred times. This small article explains what are the different kinds of joins in SQL.

At the first time you should take into account that SQL is a declarative 4th generation language. So the best way to use it (especially for beginners) is to write the query and let SQL optimizer do its job. That means thinking in set-oriented terms and avoiding sub-queries.

Let's take two example tables: Companies and Contacts.

Delphi Starter doesn't support command line

Submitted by st on

Delphi feature matrix has two important points:

  • Delphi 32-bit native code optimizing compiler (dcc32) for Windows, including high performance x86
    Assembler
  • Delphi toolchains for Windows

Regardless indicated options dcc32 doesn't work in Delphi Berlin Starter with the error message "This version of the product does not support command line compiling".

Bit-packed structure (record) in Free Pascal and Delphi

Submitted by st on

Here is the code explaining some methods to pack bit accessing logic in your program.

program project1;
 
type
  TRec1 = packed record // Doesn't pack at all
    b1, b2, b3, b4, b5, b6, b7, b8, b9, b10, b11, b12, b13, b14, b15, b16: boolean;
  end;
 
  TRec2 = bitpacked record // Free Pascal specific
    b1, b2, b3, b4, b5, b6, b7, b8, b9, b10, b11, b12, b13, b14, b15, b16: boolean;
  end;
 
  TRecByte = (b1, b2, b3, b4, b5, b6, b7, b8, b9, b10, b11, b12, b13, b14, b15, b16);
  TRecBytes = set of TRecByte;
var
  r1: TRec1;
  r2: TRec2;
  s1: TRecBytes;

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