UTOUG Training Days 2019

This session is about those rare functions and design patterns that seem simple and could be common, but are hard to find.
They're not "advanced" or "clever" or "tricks" or anything, but they're rare.  Why?

We'll have an open (controversial?) discussion; fly through an example in our comics database to illustrate the pattern, then evaluate its niche and the tradeoffs.  We'll have a chance to share our experiences and see if they are rare for the right reason(s). 

We'll look at builtins that are already common but should perhaps be used even more, and some things one can go for years without ever seeing in production.  We'll ask questions like: What can their rarity tell us about the way we are using our databases?  Do we know our data well enough to make use of functions that have some tradeoffs?

Bring your Chupacabras, and your opinions.  If you don't have any you can borrow mine.

Some specific candidates to discuss: NATURAL JOINs, LATERAL JOINs, unusual TYPEs, CLUSTERs, SET GROUPs, APPROX functions, BITMAP INDEXes