The $50 Article That Sparked My Research on CTEs

I recently found a promising article about Common Table Expressions (CTEs), a powerful SQL feature. The catch? It was behind a $50 paywall.

Instead of paying, I dove deep into the subject myself and decided to share what I learned with the community.

In this first part of my series, I break down:

What CTEs are and why they are so crucial for writing clean, readable SQL.

A brief history of their adoption across databases like PostgreSQL, MySQL, and SQL Server.

A real-world case showing how CTEs can drastically improve performance on a large dataset.

The big problem: why most ORMs like Doctrine and Hibernate still don't support them.

This is a topic every developer should understand. If you've ever struggled with nested subqueries or wondered why your ORM seems to miss a key feature, this is for you.

You can read the full article on Medium: Part 1: Why Your ORM is Hiding SQL’s Best Kept Secret (And It’s Costing You)