Are the posted questions getting worse?

  • Evil Kraig F (6/10/2013)


    I don't argue with H.L. Mencken's philosophy, but noone ever got rich trying to make a spreadsheet software using a pac-man interface, either.

    If you can't trust your users, they won't be able to get anything done faster than they could with a notebook and a pen anyway.

    As someone who works in the ecommerce world I am expected to not trust my users. It is forefront in every decision made about access. We MUST expect that the person on the other end is an unscrupulous, devious and destructive menace.

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    Understanding and Using APPLY (Part 1) - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/APPLY/69953/
    Understanding and Using APPLY (Part 2) - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/APPLY/69954/

  • Sean Lange (6/10/2013)


    Evil Kraig F (6/10/2013)


    I don't argue with H.L. Mencken's philosophy, but noone ever got rich trying to make a spreadsheet software using a pac-man interface, either.

    If you can't trust your users, they won't be able to get anything done faster than they could with a notebook and a pen anyway.

    As someone who works in the ecommerce world I am expected to not trust my users. It is forefront in every decision made about access. We MUST expect that the person on the other end is an unscrupulous, devious and destructive menace.

    Maybe you trust your users to be unscrupulous, devious and destructive menaces?

    --------------------------------------
    When you encounter a problem, if the solution isn't readily evident go back to the start and check your assumptions.
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  • Evil Kraig F (6/10/2013)


    I don't argue with H.L. Mencken's philosophy, but noone ever got rich trying to make a spreadsheet software using a pac-man interface, either.

    If you can't trust your users, they won't be able to get anything done faster than they could with a notebook and a pen anyway.

    Google keeps adding clicks to their processes on Drive. It now takes 8 clicks to print a document. Ridiculous.

    --------------------------------------
    When you encounter a problem, if the solution isn't readily evident go back to the start and check your assumptions.
    --------------------------------------
    It’s unpleasantly like being drunk.
    What’s so unpleasant about being drunk?
    You ask a glass of water. -- Douglas Adams

  • Sean Lange (6/10/2013)


    Evil Kraig F (6/10/2013)


    I don't argue with H.L. Mencken's philosophy, but noone ever got rich trying to make a spreadsheet software using a pac-man interface, either.

    If you can't trust your users, they won't be able to get anything done faster than they could with a notebook and a pen anyway.

    As someone who works in the ecommerce world I am expected to not trust my users. It is forefront in every decision made about access. We MUST expect that the person on the other end is an unscrupulous, devious and destructive menace.

    Alright, point. There is a difference between the mob and your business users. I'd skewed my viewpoint a bit, I haven't worked e-commerce in four or five years so I'd forgotten just how obnoxious they are.

    However, malicious and stupid are two very different concerns to program for. 😉


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  • Evil Kraig F (6/10/2013)


    I don't argue with H.L. Mencken's philosophy, but noone ever got rich trying to make a spreadsheet software using a pac-man interface, either.

    If you can't trust your users, they won't be able to get anything done faster than they could with a notebook and a pen anyway.

    I really didn't intend that to be a general slam of users - after all, no users means no jobs for developers - although I can see that the use of "underestimate" with "intelligence" definitely carries a negative connotation. The point I had in mind was that software developers should not assume that users will know how to "do it right" or "do it right" every time. A program that crashes because someone enters a phone number as "(123) 5551212" instead of "(123) 555-1212" costs users in lost productivity. Wise developers should anticipate that users will attempt enter phone numbers in a variety of formats and account for that by coding the application to either accept all commonly used formats (and scrub them to a standard format for storage and retrieval) or prompt users to use the proper format.

    Jason Wolfkill

  • Evil Kraig F (6/10/2013)


    Sean Lange (6/10/2013)


    Evil Kraig F (6/10/2013)


    I don't argue with H.L. Mencken's philosophy, but noone ever got rich trying to make a spreadsheet software using a pac-man interface, either.

    If you can't trust your users, they won't be able to get anything done faster than they could with a notebook and a pen anyway.

    As someone who works in the ecommerce world I am expected to not trust my users. It is forefront in every decision made about access. We MUST expect that the person on the other end is an unscrupulous, devious and destructive menace.

    Alright, point. There is a difference between the mob and your business users. I'd skewed my viewpoint a bit, I haven't worked e-commerce in four or five years so I'd forgotten just how obnoxious they are.

    However, malicious and stupid are two very different concerns to program for. 😉

    Sometime malicious and stupid are the same person though. 🙂

    Actually just today I was tracking down somebody who was clearly trying to do a sql injection attack by manipulating some query strings. Do these people honestly think that these websites don't track all this stuff. I get all kinds of alerts when stuff like this happens and we log everything we can whenever we encounter any kind of exception. It does mean we have more data than necessary to dig through when doing research but I would much prefer that to not enough. It is easy to spot and easy to block their IP blocks. /PLONK

    _______________________________________________________________

    Need help? Help us help you.

    Read the article at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Best+Practices/61537/ for best practices on asking questions.

    Need to split a string? Try Jeff Modens splitter http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Tally+Table/72993/.

    Cross Tabs and Pivots, Part 1 – Converting Rows to Columns - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/T-SQL/63681/
    Cross Tabs and Pivots, Part 2 - Dynamic Cross Tabs - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Crosstab/65048/
    Understanding and Using APPLY (Part 1) - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/APPLY/69953/
    Understanding and Using APPLY (Part 2) - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/APPLY/69954/

  • Jeff M. speaking at the SQL PASS in Detroit (SPID) meeting this Thursday and I can't make it (coaching my son's baseball team, games on Tuesdays and Thursdays)!!!

    I hope Microsoft/Rick B. records the session and makes it available for us later...

  • Grumpy DBA (6/11/2013)


    Jeff M. speaking at the SQL PASS in Detroit (SPID) meeting this Thursday and I can't make it (coaching my son's baseball team, games on Tuesdays and Thursdays)!!!

    I hope Microsoft/Rick B. records the session and makes it available for us later...

    +1 of I'm sure many more.

  • Greg Edwards-268690 (6/11/2013)


    Grumpy DBA (6/11/2013)


    Jeff M. speaking at the SQL PASS in Detroit (SPID) meeting this Thursday and I can't make it (coaching my son's baseball team, games on Tuesdays and Thursdays)!!!

    I hope Microsoft/Rick B. records the session and makes it available for us later...

    +1 of I'm sure many more.

    You are absolutely correct. 🙂

  • I have to wonder how often Gail and the other pros here get frustrated with people asking questions where the answer is in the message SQL spit out?

  • jasona.work (6/12/2013)


    I have to wonder how often Gail and the other pros here get frustrated with people asking questions where the answer is in the message SQL spit out?

    Speaking for me, rarely. I think sometimes it's easy to misinterpret or not understand the error message and think there's more to it. Especially when many of the error messages are just crappy.

  • Steve Jones - SSC Editor (6/12/2013)


    jasona.work (6/12/2013)


    I have to wonder how often Gail and the other pros here get frustrated with people asking questions where the answer is in the message SQL spit out?

    Speaking for me, rarely. I think sometimes it's easy to misinterpret or not understand the error message and think there's more to it. Especially when many of the error messages are just crappy.

    yes, many of the errors are less descriptive than desirable.

    Jason...AKA CirqueDeSQLeil
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  • SQLRNNR (6/12/2013)


    Steve Jones - SSC Editor (6/12/2013)


    jasona.work (6/12/2013)


    I have to wonder how often Gail and the other pros here get frustrated with people asking questions where the answer is in the message SQL spit out?

    Speaking for me, rarely. I think sometimes it's easy to misinterpret or not understand the error message and think there's more to it. Especially when many of the error messages are just crappy.

    yes, many of the errors are less descriptive than desirable.

    Many of those times it is simply explaining to the OP what the actual error message means in more simple terms.

    _______________________________________________________________

    Need help? Help us help you.

    Read the article at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Best+Practices/61537/ for best practices on asking questions.

    Need to split a string? Try Jeff Modens splitter http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Tally+Table/72993/.

    Cross Tabs and Pivots, Part 1 – Converting Rows to Columns - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/T-SQL/63681/
    Cross Tabs and Pivots, Part 2 - Dynamic Cross Tabs - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Crosstab/65048/
    Understanding and Using APPLY (Part 1) - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/APPLY/69953/
    Understanding and Using APPLY (Part 2) - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/APPLY/69954/

  • SQLRNNR (6/12/2013)


    Steve Jones - SSC Editor (6/12/2013)


    jasona.work (6/12/2013)


    I have to wonder how often Gail and the other pros here get frustrated with people asking questions where the answer is in the message SQL spit out?

    Speaking for me, rarely. I think sometimes it's easy to misinterpret or not understand the error message and think there's more to it. Especially when many of the error messages are just crappy.

    yes, many of the errors are less descriptive than desirable.

    Microsoft SQL Server doesn't hold the record for uninformative or crappy error messages. I remember working with a system which now and again returned remarkably unhelpful messages including "a hardware or software error occurred" and "It is not possible to execute this command".

    Tom

  • SQLRNNR (6/12/2013)


    Steve Jones - SSC Editor (6/12/2013)


    jasona.work (6/12/2013)


    I have to wonder how often Gail and the other pros here get frustrated with people asking questions where the answer is in the message SQL spit out?

    Speaking for me, rarely. I think sometimes it's easy to misinterpret or not understand the error message and think there's more to it. Especially when many of the error messages are just crappy.

    yes, many of the errors are less descriptive than desirable.

    I can only imagine what it must be like to have SQL Server running in some non-English language. MS probably translated the obtuse into the indecipherable.


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