Hi! Today I’m going to explain a part of Zend framework DB functionality. Transactions in general are quite useful, like temporary tables, but in most of situations unnecessary. Because of that, I’m going to explain when and how to use them through Zend framework.

What is transaction?

A simple answer would be – a number of individual queries that are grouped together.

An example would be something like this:

Hi to all of you! Today, I’m going to explain SELF JOIN in MySQL – I’ll answer why and then how should you use it.

But first, a short explanation. I’m going to explain a non often used SQL that came in hand recently. If you are still learning MySQL, please refer to some basics first – a good start. And now, to the fun part.

Why do anyone need SELF JOIN?

Well, SQL self-join is very useful when you want to retrieve related data stored in one table such as organizational structure. Its basically an inner join with reference on the table itself.

If you worked with osCommerce, Zen Cart, CRE Loaded or any similar eCommerce platform before, you might find Magento database structure quite confusing when you see it for the first time. I advise you not to rush too much figuring out what is what by glancing through database. Try to spend first few hours getting familiar with some background. For purposes of flexibility, the Magento database heavily utilizes an Entity-Attribute-Value (EAV) data model. As is often the case, the cost of flexibility is complexity. Is there something in Magento that is simple from developers point of view?