Systems | Development | Analytics | API | Testing

September 2020

Databases Demystified Lesson 10: Query Planning and Optimization

In this lesson, we talk about what a query planner is and does in the database. We talk about the difference between declarative and imperative programming languages, and we wrap up with a discussion of some common strategies for database optimization to improve query speed.

Executing SQL Joins in REST APIs Using DreamFactory

As a follow up to our previous blog post about retrieving related data from that REST API, I wanted to dive deeper into the power of the “related records” feature of DreamFactory’s database-backed APIs. One of the powerful features of SQL databases is the ability to relate separate data records and perform queries that retrieve that related data all at once. One problem is that this requires a fairly in-depth knowledge of your database, it’s schema, and SQL syntax.

Find Where N+1 Database Queries Affect Your Application

One of the Scout’s key features is its ability to quickly highlight N+1 queries in your application that you might not have been aware of, and then show you the exact line of code that you need to look at in order to fix it. In this video, we will use a Ruby on Rails application as an example, but the same concepts apply to other popular web frameworks.

Episode 9: Introduction to Indexes

In this episode, we learn about a very important technique for making database queries faster: indexes! Indexes are a very powerful technique and are critical to understanding how databases work under the hood. In this lesson we talk about how database indexes make use of the binary search algorithm to speed up queries. We also cover the trade-offs associated with using database indexes, and why it might not be a good idea to use too many indexes.