Escaping the Nested SQL Query Hell: Building Movie Page Data with a Single Query

2025-09-05

This article discusses the challenges of building movie page data using relational databases. Traditional methods require multiple SQL queries to fetch information such as directors, actors, and genres, and manually assemble the results into the desired hierarchical structure, which is inefficient and prone to errors. The author uses functions such as `jsonb_agg` to directly generate JSON-formatted structured data in a single SQL query, effectively solving the "object-relational impedance mismatch" problem, improving efficiency, and avoiding multiple network requests and data inconsistencies. This demonstrates the evolution of SQL and the importance of adapting to new data needs.

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