SQLFormat — Free Online SQL Formatter, Beautifier & Minifier Guides & Examples
Practical, no-fluff documentation for SQLFormat — Free Online SQL Formatter, Beautifier & Minifier — written by people who hit the problems first.
About SQLFormat
What sqlformat.net is, who runs it, why the formatter has no SQL parser, and how a client-side tool pays for itself.
Changelog
Dated change history for sqlformat.net — formatter behaviour, accessibility fixes, and content additions.
Contact SQLFormat
Contact the operator of sqlformat.net — formatter bugs, dialect misdetections, and feature requests. One human mailbox, replies within two business days.
Reading Postgres Query Plans: EXPLAIN (ANALYZE, BUFFERS) Without Crying
A practical EXPLAIN ANALYZE walkthrough — scan-type decision rules, the rows-ratio red flag, work_mem spills, hidden BUFFERS nodes, and when to reach for auto_explain.
SQL Minification Deletes Your Comments — All of Them, Quietly
The minifier here removes --, # and /* */ comments outright, and an unterminated block comment truncates the statement. Re-measured on the shipped code, with the exact input and output.
ORM-Generated SQL Gotchas: N+1, Hidden Casts, and Formatting Traps
How to capture the query an ORM actually sent, read the shapes that betray an N+1, and reformat generated SQL without a keyword formatter corrupting it.
Postgres vs MySQL Dialect Traps: The Porting Bugs Formatting Will Not Show You
Pagination syntax, string comparison defaults, ON CONFLICT vs ON DUPLICATE KEY, RETURNING, JSON types, and the type coercions that pass in one database and fail in the other.
SQL Formatters Compared: sqlparse vs SQLFluff vs pg_format vs Database-Native Tools
Honest comparison of SQL formatting tools — sqlparse, SQLFluff, pg_format, pgFormatter, Docker SQLFluff, and browser formatters — by dialect support and workflow fit.
SQL Formatting Best Practices: Queries Your Team Can Still Read in Six Months
Formatting rules that survive review — CTE layout, join alignment, explicit aliases, WHERE/AND cadence, and when to minify instead of beautify.
The One-Screen SQL Cheatsheet: CRUD, DDL, Window Functions, Dialect Traps
Printable SQL cheatsheet — logical query order, 8 window-function skeletons, CTE and recursive CTE forms, and the Postgres vs MySQL differences that bite.
SQL Hacks: Eight Tricks That Replace Infrastructure With Queries
SKIP LOCKED job queues, RETURNING everywhere, idempotent upsert replay, pg_stat_statements top-N, UPDATE...FROM, LATERAL top-N-per-group, generate_series gap-filling, and the deferred-join pagination trick.
SQL Libraries in 2026: The Parser Nearly Vanished, the Formatter Grew 659%
npm download counts for SQL clients, query builders, parsers, and formatters over 2024–2026, why drivers outrun ORMs, and why the parser nobody installs is the interesting row.
Postgres Migration Safety: Locks, Online ALTERs, and Expand-Contract
The Postgres lock table, why ADD COLUMN NOT NULL DEFAULT is safe since PG11, CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY lifecycle, expand-contract deploys, pg_repack, and lock_timeout as a seatbelt. Doc-verified where noted.
The Best-Maintained Category on This Site, and Why That Is a Problem
Registry metadata for ten SQL and database packages. Nothing here is stale — every release is under 274 days old — which inverts the usual risk from nobody fixing it to it changing under you.
SQL Patterns and Gotchas: The Bugs Formatting Can't Fix (But Makes Visible)
Left-join filters that become inner joins, NULL in NOT IN, integer division, timezone-free timestamps, and window functions that lie about ties.
SQL Tooling in 2026: What the Download Numbers Actually Show
Two years of npm download data for SQL formatters, parsers, and nearby tooling — plus why a keyword-anchored formatter still beats a parser in the browser.
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