SQL Journey: Blog #16

In this lesson, we will look at stored procedures and how it makes the job of querying to a database more efficient. Imagine that  a person is not that well-versed in creating SQL queries but this person needs information from the database to make informed decisions relating to his job. Well, fret not. For another geeky nerdy expert person could make the query for that person and all he has to do is to write a string of code that is not as lengthy as the stored procedure.

In this case, let's say we want to know the average salary of a salesman from a company database. But we are not that well-versed with SQL. What our database developer or administrator can do is to create a stored procedure that will automate the retrieval of such information.

In the database developer or administrators eyes, this is what he sees:

Next, the developer / administrator will modify the stored procedure.

We do the following modifications to the stored procedure:

Now, the administrator of the database can inform us to use the following code:

And, this will be the result.

Here's the catch of a stored procedure:

Any update to a stored procedure will be updated for all users of that stored procedure. It is more efficient since we no longer have to write long strings of code for something that is commonly being retrieved by a number of non-programming users of the database. How much more if we can couple this stored procedure that will let us input the Jobtitle in a textbox and then press a button to show the resulting table. In this case, we now have a user interface and on that interface, non-programming users can better navigate and retrieve data from the database. That's just my imagination kicking in.

Update on the touch typing journey:

I have done two lessons today and in writing this blog, I painstakingly applied what I have learned so far. I am still quite slow at 27 words per minute. I figured it would be better to apply what I have learned in my daily task so that the habit of using the appropriate finger to a given letter can be developed.