Fibonacci, Graphs and Recursive Queries   

One thing I'm really looking forward to have in the upcoming PostgreSQL 8.4 is the introduction of the WITH RECURSIVE feature that IBM DB2 and SQL Server 2005 already have. Oracle has it too but in a non-standard CONNECT BY so is much less portable. This is a feature that is perhaps more important to us for the kind of work we do than the much complained about lack of windowing functions.

I was recently taking a snoop at IBM DB2 newsletter. Why I read magazines and newsletters on databases I don't even use I guess is to see what I'm missing out on and to sound remotely educated on the topic when I run into one of those people. I also have a general fascination with magazines. In it their latest newsletter they had examples of doing Fibonacci and Graphs with Common Table Expressions (CTEs).

Robert Mala's Fibonacci CTE
Robert Mala's Graph CTE

Compare the above to David Fetter's Fibonacci Memoizing example he posted in our comments way back when.

I'd be interested in seeing what solutions David and others come out with using new features of 8.4. We can see a before 8.4 and after 8.4 recipe.

As a slightly off-topic side note - of all the Database magazines I have read - Oracle Magazine is the absolute worst. SQL Server Magazine and IBM DB2 are pretty decent. The real problem is that Oracle's magazine is not even a database magazine. Its a mishmash of every Oracle offering known to man squashed into a compendium that can satisfy no one. You would think that Oracle as big as their database is would have a magazine dedicated to just that. Perhaps there is another magazine besides Oracle Magazine, but haven't found it so I would be interested to know if I missed something.