When doing complex data transformation ( data preparation, data
manipulation, etc. ) , perhaps when preparing data for statistical
analysis, or perhaps in an ETL context, is the SQL programming
language plenty good enough?

For that type of work, can you be just as productive using SQL syntax,
and not using at all the SAS or SPSS programming languages?

I think that the pitch of the ELT folks ( ELT vs ETL) is : with the
SQL programming language, there is no use for any other data
manipulation programming language.

On Nov 15, 12:58 pm, Robert <irishhac... (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:
Depends on whether the transformations you are doing are easily
supported by the language. Many transformations are difficult to
describe in relational terms, so there is a built-in tension between
different subsets of the language, even by one vendor. Oracle has an
excellent set of language extensions. However, I do some things that
are not easily supported by them in a performant manner. These things
tend to be "bad design," or more accurately, "insane requirements,"
such as the same entities being defined in different manners by
different users - for example, massive reorganization of the data, but
some people want to see new data as if it were the old data, and
others want to rewrite history. But you can't limit what people are
wanting to see and willing to pay for by language limitations or
bias, that would be backwards. So, sometimes even ksh, unix sort and
sqlloader win, even if generally less productive. The productivity of
the most productive environment can be blown by something just outside
the problem space it is designed for.

But I may have a minority opinion. I used to consider Celko's
puzzlers defacto proof that some commonly desired things are
unnecessarily hard in SQL.

jg
--
@home.com is bogus.
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/24.90.html#subj7

On Nov 15, 5:02 pm, joel garry <joel-ga... (AT) home (DOT) com> wrote:
Yes, how suitable SQL is for data transformations depends on the exact
nature of the transformations required and the data. Oracle provides
a rich set of functions that can be used to transform and concatenate
data but some things might be more efficiently handled outside the
database.

Which version and edition of Oracle you are working with would also
affect what features are available to you for performing the work.

HTH -- Mark D Powell --