Despite the NoSQL movement trying to flag traditional databases as a dying breed, the RDBMS keeps evolving and adding new powerful weapons to its arsenal. In this talk we'll explore Common Table Expressions (SQL-99) and how SQL handles recursion, breaking the bi-dimensional barriers and paving the way to more complex data structures like trees and graphs, and how we can replicate features from social networks and recommendation systems. We'll also have a look at window functions (SQL:2003) and the advanced reporting features they make finally possible.

Storing tree structures in a bi-dimensional table has always been problematic. The simplest tree models are usually quite inefficient, while more complex ones aren't necessarily better. In this talk I briefly go through the most used models (adjacency list, materialized path, nested sets) and introduce some more advanced ones belonging to the nested intervals family (Farey algorithm, Continued Fractions, and other encodings). I describe the advantages and pitfalls of each model, some proprietary solutions (e.g. Oracle's CONNECT BY) and one of the SQL Standard's upcoming features, Common Table Expressions.