Are the posted questions getting worse?

Question

Are the posted questions getting worse?

Viewing 15 posts - 37,111 through 37,125 (of 66,738 total)

You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004406 More actions · Answer 1

SQL Kiwi (7/26/2012)
Jeff Moden (7/26/2012)
Since you decided to jump in on this, you might also want to suggest to Aaron that he also needs to make a change to his article because there's a shed load of bad code with my name on it that I didn't write.
I'm going to let this slide, because you misinterpreted my earlier comment as sarcasm, when it wasn't. Take a break and a deep breath Jeff!

There was no way for me to take your comment as other than sarcasm whether Hector's post was there or not. Back off, Paul.

--Jeff Moden

RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.

Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004406 More actions · Answer 2

capn.hector (7/26/2012)
well no more tequila and coding late at night. just made an *** of my self.

2 points for your "Man Card", though. You did retract your statement. I just wish I'd been paying attention instead of fixing the article.

--Jeff Moden

RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.

Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

Paul White SSC Guru Points: 150468 More actions · Answer 3

Jeff Moden (7/26/2012)
There was no way for me to take your comment as other than sarcasm whether Hector's post was there or not. Back off, Paul.

Well it definitely wasn't sarcasm, and I'm really not sure how to get you to understand that. Nevertheless:

"Oh good." = Glad you to hear the article will be updated to help prevent future misunderstandings. No sarcasm.

"I see there are new comments on Aaron's post now too, which seem to have improved the direction of the debate a great deal." = The first few responses were a bit snarky, in my opinion. The next few were much better, again in my opinion. No sarcasm.

And people ask me why I don't post as much on SSC as I used to 🙁

Paul White
All articles available on SQL.kiwi
@SQL_Kiwi

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004406 More actions · Answer 4

Sorry Paul. It was just poor timing and a bit of history you're not aware of. Your voice doesn't carry from down under and I took it the wrong way. Knowing that, look back at it and see what I saw.

--Jeff Moden

RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.

Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

Paul White SSC Guru Points: 150468 More actions · Answer 5

Jeff Moden (7/26/2012)
Since you decided to jump in on this, you might also want to suggest to Aaron that he also needs to make a change to his article because there's a shed load of bad code with my name on it that I didn't write.

Aaron decided to write a post comparing string-splitting methods. No doubt it was suggested to him that the 'best' T-SQL solution was the one in your article. With the best of intentions, he modified it to work with the same range of data as the other tests. If your article had included a clear warning not to modify it to use MAX, I'm sure he would have taken that into account.

As it is, I believe (knowing Aaron) that he set out to be fair to all the methods, but failed to fully account for the effects of his modification to the SSC code. Nevertheless, given that he had to very slightly modify the SSC code to get it to work with his tests, would you have him:

(a) credit you with the method while explaining that he had modified it (which he did); or

(b) not credit you at all?

No doubt you will now pick option (b), but I hope you can see that (a) would have felt like the right thing to do from his point of view.

Paul White
All articles available on SQL.kiwi
@SQL_Kiwi

Paul White SSC Guru Points: 150468 More actions · Answer 6

Jeff Moden (7/27/2012)
Sorry Paul. It was just poor timing and a bit of history you're not aware of. Your voice doesn't carry from down under and I took it the wrong way. Knowing that, look back at it and see what I saw.

Ok, I will try extra hard in future to be clearer.

Paul White
All articles available on SQL.kiwi
@SQL_Kiwi

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004406 More actions · Answer 7

SQL Kiwi (7/27/2012)
Jeff Moden (7/26/2012)
Since you decided to jump in on this, you might also want to suggest to Aaron that he also needs to make a change to his article because there's a shed load of bad code with my name on it that I didn't write.
Aaron decided to write a post comparing string-splitting methods. No doubt it was suggested to him that the 'best' T-SQL solution was the one in your article. With the best of intentions, he modified it to work with the same range of data as the other tests. If your article had included a clear warning not to modify it to use MAX, I'm sure he would have taken that into account.
As it is, I believe (knowing Aaron) that he set out to be fair to all the methods, but failed to fully account for the effects of his modification to the SSC code. Nevertheless, given that he had to very slightly modify the SSC code to get it to work with his tests, would you have him:
(a) credit you with the method while explaining that he had modified it (which he did); or
(b) not credit you at all?
No doubt you will now pick option (b), but I hope you can see that (a) would have felt like the right thing to do from his point of view.

Neither, actually. Even without the explicit warning in my article, he didn't pay attention to what his own testing was telling him. He didn't catch the fact that the code was performing a fair bit worse (especially on the low end) because of the changes he made. I would have much preferred it if he had caught the problem before he published and maybe have even contacted me as to why.

--Jeff Moden

RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.

Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

Fal Hall of Fame Points: 3143 More actions · Answer 8

Jeff Moden (7/26/2012)
I know I enjoyed it. Gave me a chance to try out my new 4 band porkchop launcher. Please see my response to that poorly formed article.

You might be interested to know, Metal Storm has gone into administration and the liquidators are looking for a buyer. They have technology which would allow you to launch up to 1 million pork chops a minute. :w00t:

Fal.

spaghettidba SSC Guru Points: 105732 More actions · Answer 9

I was offline for a couple of days and I seem to have missed a lot!

Or maybe not. Let's see:

* Celko posting arrogant and upolite replies

* Jeff's splitter performing blazingly fast

Well, no big news, after all 🙂

Oh, and, PLEASE, no more code on THE THREAD!

My eyes are bleeding... 😉

-- Gianluca Sartori

Dwain Camps SSC Guru Points: 86978 More actions · Answer 10

Gianluca Sartori (7/27/2012)
I was offline for a couple of days and I seem to have missed a lot!
Or maybe not. Let's see:
* Celko posting arrogant and upolite replies
* Jeff's splitter performing blazingly fast
Well, no big news, after all 🙂
Oh, and, PLEASE, no more code on THE THREAD!
My eyes are bleeding... 😉

Actually, I was thinking the last 8 hours or so was the liveliest I've seen this thread since I subscribed to it.

My mantra: No loops! No CURSORs! No RBAR! Hoo-uh![/I]
My thought question: Have you ever been told that your query runs too fast?

My advice:
INDEXing a poor-performing query is like putting sugar on cat food. Yeah, it probably tastes better but are you sure you want to eat it?
The path of least resistance can be a slippery slope. Take care that fixing your fixes of fixes doesn't snowball and end up costing you more than fixing the root cause would have in the first place.

Need to UNPIVOT? Why not CROSS APPLY VALUES instead?[/url]
Since random numbers are too important to be left to chance, let's generate some![/url]
Learn to understand recursive CTEs by example.[/url]
[url url=http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/St

ChrisM@Work SSC Guru Points: 186127 More actions · Answer 11

Jeff Moden (7/26/2012)
ChrisM@Work (7/26/2012)
WayneS (7/26/2012)
You'll might find this interesting: http://www.sqlperformance.com/2012/07/t-sql-queries/split-strings
Very interesting. Thanks, Wayne.
I know I enjoyed it. Gave me a chance to try out my new 4 band porkchop launcher. Please see my response to that poorly formed article.

Most of the stuff I noticed about the article has already been covered by yourself or others, Jeff. I'm still uncomfortable with "in order to handle our longest string (500,000 characters)". In all the time I've been working, and lurking here, I've never seen a requirement for splitting a string longer than one or two hundred characters, and more than thirty or forty is rare. Imagine if Saturn 5 had to be sufficiently overengineered to get to Pluto and back.

I like the way the article is written and presented, it's very readable, and it's a shame that it's a crock; but if someone posted a performance comparison using my code bastardised (against clear written advice, sorry Paul but it's there) to perform poorly, I'd want his keyfob changed to let him into the side door of KFC.

^{“Write the query the simplest way. If through testing it becomes clear that the performance is inadequate, consider alternative query forms.” - Gail Shaw}

For fast, accurate and documented assistance in answering your questions, please read this article.
Understanding and using APPLY, (I) and (II) Paul White
Hidden RBAR: Triangular Joins / The "Numbers" or "Tally" Table: What it is and how it replaces a loop Jeff Moden

TomThomson SSC Guru Points: 104773 More actions · Answer 12

EL Jerry (7/26/2012)
You forgot to include Icelandic names, where a woman's last name will surely NEVER match her paternal grandfather's name, not even her father's last name!!

I dunno, these modern sex-change operations, her grandfather might have had one and changed his name from Sigurðsson to Sigurðsdottir because (father was Sigurð). Then his son (conceived before the op) was named Sigurð after his grandfather, and his daughter was born Bryndís Sigurðsdottir, thus having the same last name as her paternal grandfather. Note that her grandfather had Sigurðsdottir as his last name in both senses of "last name" because he only changed his name that one time, so all points are covered. :w00t:

Tom

Lynn Pettis SSC Guru Points: 442467 More actions · Answer 13

Okay, I may be missing something, but how do you accidently mirror a database?

spaghettidba SSC Guru Points: 105732 More actions · Answer 14

You play with the database properties dialog in SSMS and click where you shouldn't be clicking.

That's one way.

The real question is why you're doing it in production...

-- Gianluca Sartori

Gail Shaw SSC Guru Points: 1004504 More actions · Answer 15

Lynn Pettis (7/27/2012)
Okay, I may be missing something, but how do you accidently mirror a database?

I think he means the thread was posted accidentally.

Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability

We walk in the dark places no others will enter
We stand on the bridge and no one may pass