The most recent one I wrote was a “question from error message” pattern. An experienced DBA should get it easily, a new one may struggle, and that’s good. I saw as I wrote it there were two ways to frame it; pick the “best” answer and pick “all” the answers. Best is subjective and I think automatically makes the question harder, for this one I went with “all”, but it’s good to remember that – how subjective do I want the question to be? I also debated making it a much harder question by requiring them to rule out what would be an otherwise valid answer based on understanding the impact of setting trustworthy. Doing so would have been fun, but it felt like a diversion from what I was trying to teach, so instead I added to the question to rule it out. Not explicitly, but the clue is there. There are definitely times to pull out the stops on the trickery, but only to reinforce the point being taught (mostly?).
Book Review: Big Red - Voyage of a Trident Submarine
I've grown up reading Tom Clancy and probably most of you have at least seen Red October, so this book caught my eye when browsing used books for a recent trip. It's a fairly human look at what's involved in sailing on a Trident missile submarine...
2009-03-10
1,439 reads