Got Lost Following NoCoug SQL Challenge?
Posted: April 20, 2009 Filed under: nocoug, sql 7 CommentsSo did I.
For the last few weeks there were links flying everywhere. Solutions, people commenting on solutions, people commenting on comments, and so on. I got completely lost on who said what to whom. And we are only a month and a half into the competition!
For our collective convenience, I present the definitive list of who said what to whom regarding the NoCoug SQL Challenge. Bravely stolen from Iggy Fernandez by yours truly.
Breaking news:
- More prizes! You remember that the winner will receive six books by his choice from Apress catalog. Apress just donated six more eBooks for the runner ups. I guess they are also overwhelmed by all the great solutions that were sent.
- The end date for the competition was not published, but rumors are that it’ll probably happen at the end of June. So if you have a brilliant solution you did not send your results in yet (SQLchallenge@nocoug.org) , it is time to do so.
- Remember the “SQL vs. PL/SQL” debate? (If you don’t there are links below). Iggy asked a bunch of oracle gurus their opinion on the topic and publish an article about it on NoCoug’s Journal (I think we are the only Oracle User Group with a quarterly journal). NoCoug members will get a copy in the mail, as usual. Non-Members can either register really fast or ask their friends if they can borrow a copy 🙂
Contest announcements:
- Official announcement: http://www.nocoug.org/SQLchallenge/FirstSQLchallenge.pdf
- Write-up on Chen Shapira’s blog: https://prodlife.wordpress.com/2009/03/31/first-international-nocoug-sql-challenge/
Oracle solutions:
- Rob van Wijk’s solution using the MODEL clause (Netherlands): http://rwijk.blogspot.com/2009/03/calculating-probabilities-with-n-throws.html
- Vadim Tropashko’s solution using Common Table Expressions (USA): http://vadimtropashko.wordpress.com/2009/03/25/variable-number-of-joins/
- Laurent Schneider’s solution using CONNECT BY and XMLQUERY (Switzerland): http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/post/PLNKI2MYB0YCYAUL/#Mx1E6DR4VGI3O9Z
- Craig Martin’s solution using CONNECT BY and logarithms (USA): http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/post/PLNKI2MYB0YCYAUL/#Mx26NK96OBG2FLQ
- Alberto Dell’Era’s two solutions using Fourier transforms (Italy): http://www.adellera.it/investigations/nocoug_challenge/index.html
- Fabien (Waldar) Contaminard’s solution using the multinomial distribution (France): http://www.waldar.org/blog/200904/nocougs-first-sql-challenge
Non-Oracle solutions:
- Postgres solution (Romania): http://hype-free.blogspot.com/2009/04/nocoug-sql-challenge.html
Commentaries:
- Comment on Alberto Dell’Era’s solution by Jonathan Lewis: http://jonathanlewis.wordpress.com/2009/04/15/model/
- Analysis of Alberto Dell’Era’s solution by Iggy Fernandez: https://prodlife.wordpress.com/2009/03/31/first-international-nocoug-sql-challenge/#comment-2772
Debate on the merits of SQL and PL/SQL
- Rob van Wijk: http://rwijk.blogspot.com/2009/03/choosing-between-sql-and-plsql.html
- Chen Shapira: https://prodlife.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/would-you-rather-maintain-sql-or-plsql/
- Laurent Schneider: http://laurentschneider.com/wordpress/2009/03/to-sql-or-to-plsql.html
- H.Tonguç Yýlmaz: http://tonguc.wordpress.com/2009/03/21/hot-discussion-sql-or-plsql/
Whew, quite a link collection. Now I’m obsessing whether or not I missed anyone!
If I did, let me know if the comments. I’ll keep editing this post with the latest info.
not sure if I got my last comment marked as spam, moderated, banned or I simply forgot to click submit but I wanted to mention Vadim solution is not an Oracle solution but an ANSI solution that perhaps will work in the next release of Oracle…
Very true!
I think it’ll be a problem because the judges can’t really test it. But its still a fun solution 🙂
About your lost comment, I could not find it, but maybe it was automatically marked as spam. It was definitely not moderated or banned!
I probably forgot to click submit… by the way, I censored myself in the repost 😛
No need to censor yourself, I can do it for you 😉
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Chen, you should read André Araujo’s solution from the last trackback, it’s impressive.