>>>
>>>
>>>Rest easy, I decided to leave this thread and UT as well.
>>
>>I hope you are kidding about leaving UT. You have been an invaluable guru and helper here.
>>
>>As far as what Tore said, I disagree. This thread - although it goes a mile over my head - is technical discussion of the gurus. Even though the thread sometimes deviates to some personal comments, I still think it is very informative. And if I ever have time, I will go through each message to understand it.
>
>Same for me, I have learned quite a few things about CTE's in the context of this thread which were new for me. I also thought for some reason that CTS's were specific to SQL Server.

They were introduced in SQL-99 - you probably blocked that memory, as this was the SQL that added official support for boolean data type - sticking it to Oracle and DB2 ;-))

SQL server introduced them 2005 and championed them (perhaps inside ANSI commitee as well, but that is just a guess) and for a few years they were only there. PostGreSQL and MySQL have it now, but currently with implementation differences which might create difficulties in execution time when "just" running the query in another backend - so while I see even a bit more benefit in "code beauty" compared to Walter, I currently emulate his preference of coding inline, (or in a view/temp table), but for the reason I do not want to have code depend on backend specifics. Probably in 3 to 6 years my special reason will have evaporated (if I am still coding then...) as each backend "learns" from competitors...