Are the posted questions getting worse?

  • Ed Wagner (8/19/2016)


    GilaMonster (8/19/2016)


    !!!!

    https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/identifying-fixing-performance-issues-caused-parameter-sniffing

    And massive amount of work it was too. Recording's the easy part. Scripting is the most time consuming, editing probably the most difficult.

    Congratulations, Gail. Now if only I had a subscription so I could watch in. :crazy:

    Finished it earlier today. Lots of golden nuggets of info and I love the demo code. Never seen it before with the idea of "read spread" etc. Anyways I thought it was top notch and worthy of 5 stars.

  • I have always been accused of being a little over the top about making sure we have backups of everything in place in case we need to rollback the update. In the course of my career I have done a lot of deployments and have never had to do a rollback. This last weekend that changed. We had some changes to our ecommerce site done by a consultant that I pushed live Friday. There were numerous problems with the deployment and the decision was made to roll it back. I was able to have the site back on line in the state it was in prior to deployment in a little over an hour. Perhaps some of those people who always called a bit over the top can relax now and realize that the time spent preparing for the worst case scenario has proven worth the effort. Now if we could just hire some consultants that can actually write code that doesn't suck we will be in good shape. 😛

    _______________________________________________________________

    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/

  • Sean Lange (8/22/2016)


    I have always been accused of being a little over the top about making sure we have backups of everything in place in case we need to rollback the update. In the course of my career I have done a lot of deployments and have never had to do a rollback. This last weekend that changed. We had some changes to our ecommerce site done by a consultant that I pushed live Friday. There were numerous problems with the deployment and the decision was made to roll it back. I was able to have the site back on line in the state it was in prior to deployment in a little over an hour. Perhaps some of those people who always called a bit over the top can relax now and realize that the time spent preparing for the worst case scenario has proven worth the effort. Now if we could just hire some consultants that can actually write code that doesn't suck we will be in good shape. 😛

    An hour! that's 67500000 miles when travelling at the speed of light 😀

    😎

    Good job!

  • Sean Lange (8/22/2016)


    I have always been accused of being a little over the top about making sure we have backups of everything in place in case we need to rollback the update. In the course of my career I have done a lot of deployments and have never had to do a rollback. This last weekend that changed. We had some changes to our ecommerce site done by a consultant that I pushed live Friday. There were numerous problems with the deployment and the decision was made to roll it back. I was able to have the site back on line in the state it was in prior to deployment in a little over an hour. Perhaps some of those people who always called a bit over the top can relax now and realize that the time spent preparing for the worst case scenario has proven worth the effort.

    Went through that as a consultant advisor to a Dev/SQL manager. Her boss is the Director of Finance (basically no background in servers, backups, etc) and kept telling her to "stop being emotional about backups" (we both wanted to kill him to end the gene pool for making such a stupid remark) during a contract negotiation with a 3rd party provider because "the equipment provider has all of the bases covered" (they use offsite equipment provided by a 3rd party partially because he knows nothing). I told her that of all the things in this world concerning computers, that's probably the #1 concern and to stick to her guns during the negotiations even though the "guy" (if you can call him that) was totally out of line in his comments.

    Heh... you have to love how "The Force" works because, just 3 days later, the 3rd party made a serious mistake causing 3 days of information to be lost in his department. It took several days for his whole department working overtime to find or reenter data from source documents and emails and they're still not sure the got everything. The jerk didn't apologize for his stupid, thoughtless, highly insulting remark but he hasn't accused her of being "emotional" in her decision making since then. Sometimes, "the bat" works. 😛

    So, well done on sticking to your guns on backups. It's like when people ask me what I do as a DBA... "You'll find out if I ever stop doing it". 😀

    Now if we could just hire some consultants that can actually write code that doesn't suck we will be in good shape. 😛

    Heh... a really great first question to them is "How do you get the current date and time"? :-P:-P:-P:-P

    --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)

  • drew.allen (8/17/2016)


    I'm writing an article explaining my solution to Credits and Debits and am looking for two or three people to review it before I submit it. Any takers?

    Drew

    I'd be happy to review it.

    Wayne
    Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server 2008
    Author - SQL Server T-SQL Recipes


    If you can't explain to another person how the code that you're copying from the internet works, then DON'T USE IT on a production system! After all, you will be the one supporting it!
    Links:
    For better assistance in answering your questions
    Performance Problems
    Common date/time routines
    Understanding and Using APPLY Part 1 & Part 2

  • Jeff Moden (8/22/2016)


    Sean Lange (8/22/2016)


    I have always been accused of being a little over the top about making sure we have backups of everything in place in case we need to rollback the update. In the course of my career I have done a lot of deployments and have never had to do a rollback. This last weekend that changed. We had some changes to our ecommerce site done by a consultant that I pushed live Friday. There were numerous problems with the deployment and the decision was made to roll it back. I was able to have the site back on line in the state it was in prior to deployment in a little over an hour. Perhaps some of those people who always called a bit over the top can relax now and realize that the time spent preparing for the worst case scenario has proven worth the effort.

    Went through that as a consultant advisor to a Dev/SQL manager. Her boss is the Director of Finance (basically no background in servers, backups, etc) and kept telling her to "stop being emotional about backups" (we both wanted to kill him to end the gene pool for making such a stupid remark) during a contract negotiation with a 3rd party provider because "the equipment provider has all of the bases covered" (they use offsite equipment provided by a 3rd party partially because he knows nothing). I told her that of all the things in this world concerning computers, that's probably the #1 concern and to stick to her guns during the negotiations even though the "guy" (if you can call him that) was totally out of line in his comments.

    Heh... you have to love how "The Force" works because, just 3 days later, the 3rd party made a serious mistake causing 3 days of information to be lost in his department. It took several days for his whole department working overtime to find or reenter data from source documents and emails and they're still not sure the got everything. The jerk didn't apologize for his stupid, thoughtless, highly insulting remark but he hasn't accused her of being "emotional" in her decision making since then. Sometimes, "the bat" works. 😛

    So, well done on sticking to your guns on backups. It's like when people ask me what I do as a DBA... "You'll find out if I ever stop doing it". 😀

    Now if we could just hire some consultants that can actually write code that doesn't suck we will be in good shape. 😛

    Heh... a really great first question to them is "How do you get the current date and time"? :-P:-P:-P:-P

    I was actually involved in the decision process for this consultant and the answer was much as I would have expected from me. A somewhat questioning "getdate?". The code they produced early in their stay here was great. No problems at all in the first 2-3 deployments. And those were far more complicated. The problem started when the marketing department realized they wanted far more things done than they had budget for. As a result they started applying a lot of pressure and our poor consultant (who didn't have too many years of experience) started cutting corners. Then they left the deployment to me and there were no instructions other than "the code is all checked in". Well it was checked in but not really completed at least to the level of done that I like to leave things. I honestly don't blame the consultant as much as our own team. The consultant lacked the experience and confidence to tell them they were asking for the impossible and that to get it done in time would require sloppy work. So in the desire to complete all the work, the quality dropped considerably.

    _______________________________________________________________

    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/

  • WayneS (8/22/2016)


    drew.allen (8/17/2016)


    I'm writing an article explaining my solution to Credits and Debits and am looking for two or three people to review it before I submit it. Any takers?

    Drew

    I'd be happy to review it.

    Thanks, Wayne. I've already received comments from two other people. I'll send out an update once I have incorporated their comments.

    On a related note, I'm trying to incorporate images from OneDrive or Google Drive. They're showing up in preview as a broken image. I'm thinking it might be because it's not a direct link to the image. Any ideas about how to get them to display? I also tried DropBox, but it said that I needed the Pro version to change the security on a file.

    Drew

    J. Drew Allen
    Business Intelligence Analyst
    Philadelphia, PA

  • drew.allen (8/22/2016)


    WayneS (8/22/2016)


    drew.allen (8/17/2016)


    I'm writing an article explaining my solution to Credits and Debits and am looking for two or three people to review it before I submit it. Any takers?

    Drew

    I'd be happy to review it.

    Thanks, Wayne. I've already received comments from two other people. I'll send out an update once I have incorporated their comments.

    On a related note, I'm trying to incorporate images from OneDrive or Google Drive. They're showing up in preview as a broken image. I'm thinking it might be because it's not a direct link to the image. Any ideas about how to get them to display? I also tried DropBox, but it said that I needed the Pro version to change the security on a file.

    Drew

    When you're editing your article, you have to upload an image with the button below the article content. Once uploaded, the image will appear - at the bottom, I think. You can drag it to where it should be in the article. This is just one of the quirks using the editor.

  • Ed Wagner (8/22/2016)


    drew.allen (8/22/2016)


    WayneS (8/22/2016)


    drew.allen (8/17/2016)


    I'm writing an article explaining my solution to Credits and Debits and am looking for two or three people to review it before I submit it. Any takers?

    Drew

    I'd be happy to review it.

    Thanks, Wayne. I've already received comments from two other people. I'll send out an update once I have incorporated their comments.

    On a related note, I'm trying to incorporate images from OneDrive or Google Drive. They're showing up in preview as a broken image. I'm thinking it might be because it's not a direct link to the image. Any ideas about how to get them to display? I also tried DropBox, but it said that I needed the Pro version to change the security on a file.

    Drew

    When you're editing your article, you have to upload an image with the button below the article content. Once uploaded, the image will appear - at the bottom, I think. You can drag it to where it should be in the article. This is just one of the quirks using the editor.

    Image appears at top. Click the image to insert it where the cursor is. Drag it where you need it.

    Or put them all at the bottom with Fig 1, Fig 2, etc above or below (be consistent). Then put a "Put Fig 1 here" in the text and an editor can move them.

  • Gail, you just made my day with this answer. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/FindPost1811748.aspx

    I can't stop laughing. 😀

    Luis C.
    General Disclaimer:
    Are you seriously taking the advice and code from someone from the internet without testing it? Do you at least understand it? Or can it easily kill your server?

    How to post data/code on a forum to get the best help: Option 1 / Option 2
  • Luis Cazares (8/23/2016)


    Gail, you just made my day with this answer. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/FindPost1811748.aspx

    I can't stop laughing. 😀

    omg

  • Luis Cazares (8/23/2016)


    Gail, you just made my day with this answer. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/FindPost1811748.aspx

    I can't stop laughing. 😀

    On the bus on the way home. Now people I don't even know think I'm a weirdo 😀


    [font="Arial"]Low-hanging fruit picker and defender of the moggies[/font]

    For better assistance in answering your questions, please read this[/url].


    Understanding and using APPLY, (I)[/url] and (II)[/url] Paul White[/url]

    Hidden RBAR: Triangular Joins[/url] / The "Numbers" or "Tally" Table: What it is and how it replaces a loop[/url] Jeff Moden[/url]

  • Woo-hoo! Just found out that I'm speaking at SQL Saturday #545 in Pittsburgh!

    +--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
    Check out my blog at https://pianorayk.wordpress.com/

  • Ray K (8/23/2016)


    Woo-hoo! Just found out that I'm speaking at SQL Saturday #545 in Pittsburgh!

    Congrats!!!

    _______________________________________________________________

    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/

  • Luis Cazares (8/23/2016)


    Gail, you just made my day with this answer. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/FindPost1811748.aspx

    I can't stop laughing. 😀

    I was fully expecting to get a reply like "Tried that and it won't start!!!!". I do hope the reply was sarcastic.

    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

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