Using window functions is yet another way to implement pagination in SQL. They offer a flexible and above all, standards-compliant option. But only SQL Server and the Oracle database allow to use them for a pipelined Top-N query. PostgreSQL does not use indexes for those queries and is therefore executing them very inefficiently. MySQL does not support window functions at all.

So we’ve looked at the Template Method Pattern with an implementation as really simple example, and another real world implementation. We have additional requirements however. We also need to transform the template so that placeholders will contain the proper text, and have the value of the placeholders customized to our customers. Let’s first look again at the executing code, so we get an idea of what API we want.

It seems like some NoSQL vendors have been moving back towards SQL-like interfaces, which is just what this writer has a problem with. He discusses the problems that arise when these worlds collide, and calls for "a real language for unstructured data," rather than resorting to those like XQuery. There is an interesting list of suggestions for what such a language should include.

Another selection of this week's new projects, talks, tutorials and links from the Scala world

Cloudshift is a Node.js web application framework coded in haXe, an open-source multi-platform programming language. Being a multi-platform language, haXe targets other platforms, like JavaScript, Flash, NekoVM, PHP, C++, C# and Java etc.