sqlfmt▍
sqlfmt blog
Practical posts on writing cleaner SQL and fixing the errors your database gives back.
By Sharon Ben-Moshe · Aug 2, 2026
PostgreSQL's "relation does not exist" error almost always traces back to one of six causes — from case folding to a stale search_path. Here's how to diagnose and fix each one.
Read postBy Sharon Ben-Moshe · Aug 2, 2026
PostgreSQL, MySQL, and SQLite page results with LIMIT. SQL Server uses TOP or OFFSET-FETCH. BigQuery uses standard LIMIT/OFFSET. Here's how the syntax — and the gotchas — differ.
Read postBy Sharon Ben-Moshe · Aug 2, 2026
COALESCE, ISNULL, and IFNULL all claim to "handle NULLs" — but they aren't portable, and one of them means something completely different in MySQL than it does in SQL Server. Here's the dialect-by-dialect breakdown.
Read postBy Sharon Ben-Moshe · Jul 13, 2026
Multi-row INSERT alignment, UPDATE SET clause style, DELETE WHERE formatting, and ON CONFLICT/MERGE upsert syntax across five SQL dialects, with examples.
Read postBy Sharon Ben-Moshe · Jul 13, 2026
SQLite vs PostgreSQL syntax differences that break migrations: dynamic typing, AUTOINCREMENT vs SERIAL/IDENTITY, JOIN support, dates, and ALTER TABLE.
Read postBy Sharon Ben-Moshe · Jul 13, 2026
BigQuery SQL differs from Postgres and SQL Server in quoting, types, keys, and cost. Here is the syntax map you need before porting your first query.
Read postBy Sharon Ben-Moshe · Jul 13, 2026
Reserved words like ORDER, GROUP, and USER silently break SQL queries used as column names. See which words are reserved per dialect and how to quote them.
Read postBy Sharon Ben-Moshe · Jul 13, 2026
Formatting SQL stored procedures means aligning parameters, indenting BEGIN/END blocks, and handling PL/pgSQL, T-SQL, and MySQL control flow correctly.
Read postBy Sharon Ben-Moshe · Jul 13, 2026
A practical SQL code review checklist for pull requests: naming, missing indexes, transaction safety, backward-compatible migrations, and injection risk.
Read postBy Sharon Ben-Moshe · Jul 13, 2026
UNION and UNION ALL combine query results, but mismatched columns fail silently, not loudly. Here's how to align, parenthesize, and order them for readable SQL.
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