taking python enterprise level?...

[Philip Semanchuk]

On Mar 3, 2010, at 3:58 PM, mk wrote:

> Philip Semanchuk wrote:
>>> So there *may* be some evidence that joins are indeed bad in  
>>> practice. If someone has smth specific/interesting on the subject,  
>>> please post.
>> It's an unprovable assertion, or a meaningless one depending on how  
>> one defines the terms. You could also say "there *may* be some  
>> evidence that Python lists are bad in practice". Python lists and  
>> SQL JOINs are like any part of a language or toolkit. They're good  
>> tools for solving certain classes of problems. They can also be  
>> misapplied to problems that they're not so good at. Sometimes  
>> they're a performance bottleneck, even when solving the problems  
>> for which they're best. Sometimes the best way to solve a  
>> performance bottleneck is to redesign your app/system so you don't  
>> need to solve that kind of problem anymore (hence the join-less  
>> databases). Other times, the cure is worse than the disease and  
>> you're better off throwing hardware at the problem.
>
> Look, I completely agree with what you're saying, but: that doesn't  
> change the possibility that joins may be expensive in comparison to  
> other SQL operations. This is the phrase I should have used perhaps;  
> 'expensive in comparison with other SQL operations' instead of 'bad'.

Well OK, but that's a very different argument. Yes, joins can be  
expensive. They're often still the best option, though. The first step  
people usually take to get away from joins is denormalization which  
can improve SELECT performance at the expense of slowing down INSERTs,  
UPDATEs, and DELETEs, not to mention complicating one's code and data  
model. Is that a worthwhile trade? Depends on the application. As I  
said, sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.

Don't worry about joins until you know they're a problem. As Knuth  
said, premature optimization is the root of all evil.

Good luck
Philip

PS - Looks like you're using Postgres -- excellent choice. I miss  
using it.