SQL at work Structuring filters for Ad Hoc analysis

252. Structuring filters for Ad Hoc analysis

Now that you have database access let’s discuss some tips for writing and organizing your research and queries.

This one comes from a Data Analyst colleague of mine. I noticed that the first filter in all of his queries is always 1 = 1 (which is always TRUE and doesn’t affect query results):

SELECT * FROM users WHERE 1 = 1 AND country = 'us' AND status = 'customer'

The idea is that when you’re researching something you often look at different slices of data by commenting filters out like so:

SELECT * FROM users WHERE 1 = 1 AND country = 'us' --...
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-- Type your query here, for example this one -- lists all records from users table: SELECT * FROM users
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