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A Use Case for Recursive CTEs

Jeffin Mathew takes us through a use case for recursive common table expressions:

An individual is working in HR and wants to find out which individual is managing who. This may be for several reasons such as, they need to ask the managers on the progress of their staff and if their appraisal is coming up or is due.

Another scenario may be that the company is enrolling more staff and wants to find out the capacity of the current staff or find individuals who have not yet got anyone to manage to give them the opportunity to do so.

Click through for the solution. Often times, we see recursive CTEs show up in hierarchical queries like this. When the number of records is small, they work really well. The issue comes with scale; that’s when a different table design becomes important.