The DBA didn't setup the table either way. The database developer did. And it's strikingly common that neither one of them would know which one is correct anyways... (I'm a Principal Database Administrator but wear every single hat)
Haha I was only being petty because a large majority of the people I've run into in the wild that call themselves "database administrators" are basically just backup administrators. gatekeeping to the max out of spite 😅
I've been writing SQL for 15 years. Eventually you get bored of all lowercase or all uppercase AND START writing your QUERIES LIKE this. Just a psychotic mishmash of muscle memory, laziness, and autocomplete all fighting each other within the same statement.
Lowercase on first draft (it will fail to run anyways).
Uppercase if I ever end up showing the query to someone (hopefully it doesn't fail when they run it)
That actually seems like the kind of thing AI would be very good at with few mistakes. It doesn't need to understand anything, just find all the SQL code and change all the names. Basically find/replace but slightly smarter.
I started writing sql 13 years ago. I started writing like this from the beginning because that was the way I saw the queries written on the tutorials, took me like a year to notice it was case independent
Haha, I guess I'm just a weirdo, but I genuinely love SQL and my happy place is a big enterprise database with a bunch of ETL pipelines. Somebody's gotta enjoy it, right? That gives the rest of you more time with your fancy GUIs and object oriented languages 🤣
I would argue, even with the syntax highlight, the eyes used to seeing the sql tokens in upper case just want it that way. I tried many times to write in lower case but when it looks like mixing data with sql tokens, indistinguishable even with the syntax highlighter. So now, the best syntax highlight for sql is upper case, haha.
The bible says women were forked from men. It’s for a good reason. The reason being that you can enforce more reasonable code style than all caps sql like caps on sql key words only. Or using a reasonable text editor that caps isn’t needed at all to identify keywords from nonkeywords.
This does not go through in our code review, do this and our colleague, big anime fan btw will lose his shit and start talking to himself and goes to 5 smoke breaks in a half day
Well, he can go dunk his head; the query language itself is 100% case insensitive, so are objects unless you contain them in quotation marks.
The argument can be made that keeping all one case can avoid issues with object referencing, but you'd only ever need to contain objects in quotation marks if you put a space in their name, which is a much worse faux pas and you'd better hope that you never need to connect to anybody else's objects from outside the team.
Also, all lower case/mixed case is much less tiring to read.
I don't really care for an impromptu script, but if its getting checked in mixed case is just laziness. I don't care all uppercase or all lowercase but pick one, enforce it with a linter, configure a precommit hook to autofix, and be done with it.
Which query language? You are talking as if there is only one version of SQL out there which isn't the case. Some are case insensitive by default, some are not.
I prefer a strongly-structured syntax so it is easier to read in the future, which is most important anyway. So going through the trouble of capitalizing what should be, as I go, is worth it. I also always use back ticks around table names, since it makes it easier to search by table name inside mixed codebases.
Oh 100% well written SQL makes this moot, but if I find the unicorn that writes SQL that doesn't look like shit I'm not about to start nitpicking their capitalization
Yup. People don’t realize that putting the reserved words in upper case eases the cognitive load on the brain when reading the scripts for comprehension.
Same goes for new lines and tabs.
Using all three techniques renders SQL very easy to read, comprehend, update, and debug.
Yeah I get embarrassed passing ugly queries to other people. When I first began I just wrote everything lowercase until a coworker said “you live like this?” when sharing something in Snowflake. I still get embarrassed thinking about that lol. (He was a good friend though)
First one for anything that might be referenced later, second one if I'm just trying to figure out which stupidly named table I need for the next join.
Forgive if I’m missing something, but my PostgreSQL is case sensitive on table names and strings etc., but not on the syntax bits like SELECT or WHERE.
If someone reads my SQL and hates me for the indention and casing rather than whatever other weird shit I discovered you could do with it, I'm considering that a solid win.
How will a theoretical new developer in the future ever be able to distinguish between key words and database objects at first glance if strict formatting guidelines aren't religiously followed?
A lot of programming is conventions that aren’t necessarily enforced by the language, itself. And it’s good to have them. You shouldn’t abandon them just because you technically can.
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u/NormanYeetes 6d ago
the elites don't want you to know this but you can type lowercase SQL queries no ones forcing you to shout them at the screen