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Development Tools Database Foundations SQL Calculating, Aggregating and Other Functions String Functions

Posted by Sebas Pinto
Sebas Pinto
462 Points

What benefit has manipulate Strings directly in the query and not in the Programming Language that i'm using for my app?

I was wondering, what option is better?. Languages like Python are more efficient in String manipulation, so, is it necessary manipulate them in the query?, or can i retrieve the data pure, and then edit in my development language?

PS: Sorry for my English, im a Spanish Native Speaker

1 Answer

Casey Ydenberg
Casey Ydenberg
15,622 Points
Casey Ydenberg
Casey Ydenberg
15,622 Points

Remember that the database engine is often on a different server than the app, and that once the query is executed everything retrieved from it will be in memory (instead of stored on disk). So to scale you need to limit and sort your query with the database engine wherever possible. If your query returns millions of records and you plan to sort them in your backend language, it won't work.

(Note that for doing things like inserting a single record it may not matter; mostly this matters for search and sort type queries).