Oracle syntax - should we have to choose between the old and the new?
- by Martin Milan
Hi,
I work on a code base in the region of about 1'000'000 lines of source, in a team of around eight developers. Our code is basically an application using an Oracle database, but the code has evolved over time (we have plenty of source code from the mid nineties in there!).
A dispute has arisen amongst the team over the syntax that we are using for querying the Oracle database. At the moment, the overwhelming majority of our queries use the "old" Oracle Syntax for joins, meaning we have code that looks like this...
Example of Inner Join
select customers.*, orders.date, orders.value from customers, orders where customers.custid = orders.custid
Example of Outer Join
select customers.custid, contacts.ContactName, contacts.ContactTelNo from customers, contacts where customers.custid = contacts.custid(+)
As new developers have joined the team, we have noticed that some of them seem to prefer using SQL-92 queries, like this:
Example of Inner Join
select customers.*, orders.date, orders.value from customers inner join orders on (customers.custid = orders.custid)
Example of Outer Join
select customers.custid, contacts.ContactName, contacts.ContactTelNo from customers left join contacts on (customers.custid = contacts.custid)
Group A say that everyone should be using the the "old" syntax - we have lots of code in this format, and we ought to value consistency. We don't have time to go all the way through the code now rewriting database queries, and it wouldn't pay us if we had. They also point out that "this is the way we've always done it, and we're comfortable with it..."
Group B however say that they agree that we don't have the time to go back and change existing queries, we really ought to be adopting the "new" syntax on code that we write from here on in. They say that developers only really look at a single query at a time, and that so long as developers know both syntax there is nothing to be gained from rigidly sticking to the old syntax, which might be deprecated at some point in the future.
Without declaring with which group my loyalties lie, I am interested in hearing the opinions of impartial observers - so let the games commence!
Martin.
Ps. I've made this a community wiki so as not to be seen as just blatantly chasing after question points...
