I would assume he means creating a foreign key relationship from the posts and users table. Doesn't rails or prisma have a SQL migration tool? (Upon looking it looks like it's Active Record)

So the equivalent of

`rails db:migrate` after doing what you suggested in the interview. You could write in SQL as..

``` ALTER TABLE posts ADD COLUMN user_id INT, ADD CONSTRAINT fk_user FOREIGN KEY (user_id) REFERENCES users(id); ```

I don't know if that's what he was after but that's what my mind jumped to immediately. I'd recommend learning a bit as sometimes I've found that orms can be a lot slower than writing plain SQL for some more complex data fetching.

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jama211 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

I’ve written manual SQL for years in previous roles, but because I haven’t touched it in 6 months I’d have had to double check how to write that with a quick google. It’s just a bad interview technique to require write learned syntax.

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abustamam 6 days ago | parent [-]

I agree but lots of companies do similar things in their interview processes so we just have to know everything I guess.

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jama211 5 days ago | parent [-]

What’s more likely is you get lucky one day and the company that hires you is the one that happens to have asked you the questions you brushed up on recently, rather than the company that’s the best fit.

Or if you have the luxury to choose, which can happen later in your software engineering career, you can simply turn down companies with bad interview processes. Personally I’m a fan of this method, but it’s a luxury for sure.

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abustamam 5 days ago | parent [-]

I've been fortunate in that I haven't had to do a formal interview for any job I've ever had, except for my first job. I've just been working either with people with whom I've worked, or referrals of those people. I know that's an extremely privileged place to be, but it's the best place to be IMO.

	▲	jama211 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		100%. Your experience and references should be able to speak to your abilities better than some challenge would anyways.

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abustamam 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Thanks! I think I was (conceptually) missing the constraint/references part. Prior to that I had only worked with firebase and Mongo so I was just like "OK so I just put userID column on post table right?" and apparently no, not right, lol.

What's nice about prisma and hasura is that you can actually read the sql migration files generated, and you can set the logging to a level where you can read the sql being run when performing a query or mutation. I found that helpful to understand how sql is written, but since I'm not actually writing it I can't claim proficiency. But I can understand it.