It's certainly a worthy goal:

...to build towards a library of useful and hopefully generic sql statements.
Sadly, SQL doesn't admit genericity easily. SQL isn't a procedural language; that is both its strength and weakness. It doesn't admit variables (not "pure" SQL), so, for example, you can't create a "generic count-duplicates" statement like this: 
SELECT @columns, COUNT(*)
FROM $table
GROUP BY @columns
HAVING COUNT(*) > 1

[download]
where the above is a mythical SQL-Perl hybrid.

You can get halfway there. In the past, I've often resorted to managing many statements with a bit of Perl. For example, in one of my scripts to rebuild tables you'll find stuff like this: 

@key_cols1 = qw(account_id group_id);
@key_cols2 = qw(account_id manager_id asset_id);
# Later...
$set1_sql = 'SELECT ' . join(',', @key_cols1)
   . 'FROM ' . $table1_name
   . 'WHERE ' . $table1_cond
# You get the idea

[download]
So, it's not pretty, but it's better to maintain one set of templates in code than 18 separate SQL files.

You're right, it seems like there should be a better way, but most SQL interpreters seem to stop just a hair short or supporting cool stuff like this. If you can come up with something workable, I'll be the first to grab your stuff!

In reply to Re: How to manage sql statements by VSarkiss
in thread How to manage sql statements by tonyday

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.