What will a person who reads this book gain in terms of understanding how the query engine works?
A. The approach I took in the books was first to understand logical query processing, then physical query processing (the engine), and then tackle practical problems where you need to combine your knowledge in both. It’s a problem based approach; I didn’t attempt to explain the engine for the sake of understanding how the engine works; rather to look at common practical problems developers face, write several solutions to each problem, analyze how the engine processes the solutions, optimize their performance, and simplify them. Ideal solutions are those that are both simple and perform well. A complex solution may have the side-effect of making the author proud of the ability to write such a solution, but is more prone to bugs and obviously involves maintenance overhead. The real beauty is in simple solutions that also perform well. Regarding querying logic, the books put a lot of emphasis on correct understanding of SQL and thinking in terms of sets; this is a very though phase that
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- What will a person who reads this book gain in terms of understanding how the query engine works?
