Software Development has a habit of throwing up the same problems again and again. Subtle variations abound, but I have always believed that with a few core programming techniques most problems can be solved. In an eighty/twenty world, only twenty percent of problems are interesting and only twenty percent of those require a truly original or innovative solution.

The trick is identifying the underlying problem, or design pattern, that you are dealing with and then applying your tried and tested algorithm. Of course, it helps a great deal if you can remember the precise code for that algorithm.

That’s where sites like “Common MySQL Queries” come in. A fantastic repository of general purpose algorithms for common, and not so common, problems, it is something that any developer working with MySQL should have bookmarked. The majority of the code is portable to other RDBMS platforms, but it is “cut and paste” simple for MySQL.

This has been a public service announcement on behalf of people who can’t remember how to “do that thing they did last time”.