Are the posted questions getting worse?

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Are the posted questions getting worse?

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Gail Shaw SSC Guru Points: 1004504 More actions · Answer 1

DesNorton - Wednesday, July 5, 2017 10:08 PM
Brandie Tarvin - Wednesday, July 5, 2017 8:48 AM
Speaking of excellence... If someone puts "expert at ..." on their resume, how large a grain of salt do you take it with? Is it an automatic turnoff or a warning flag?
Or do you accept it at face value until interview time?
I sat in on an interview of candidate for a Dev position that was an "expert" at SQL. She was very proud of the fact that she had worked with every version since SQL6.5.
I gave her a piece of paper, that had a single question.
DECLARE @Num INT;
Please write a SQL statement that will evaluate @Num, and return one of the following results
If @Num is divisible by 3, return "Fizz"
If @Num is divisible by 5, return "Buzz"
If @Num is divisible by 15, return "FizzBuzz"
She stared at the paper for about 5 mins, then burst into tears. The request was way beyond her ability

I'd need to check what the modulo operator is in SQL (% ? ), since I don't use it particularly often, but other than that, it's a trivial problem.

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

Grant Fritchey SSC Guru Points: 398890 More actions · Answer 2

Thom A - Thursday, July 6, 2017 6:07 AM
GilaMonster - Thursday, July 6, 2017 5:55 AM
DesNorton - Wednesday, July 5, 2017 11:13 PM
@Grant Fritchey
I believe that congratulations are in order, sir.
Or condolences, whiskey and a shoulder to cry on. 🙂
How about a monkey Shoulder?

Now we're talking!

"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt

Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning

Eirikur Eiriksson SSC Guru Points: 182912 More actions · Answer 3

GilaMonster - Thursday, July 6, 2017 6:37 AM
DesNorton - Wednesday, July 5, 2017 10:08 PM
Brandie Tarvin - Wednesday, July 5, 2017 8:48 AM
Speaking of excellence... If someone puts "expert at ..." on their resume, how large a grain of salt do you take it with? Is it an automatic turnoff or a warning flag?
Or do you accept it at face value until interview time?
I sat in on an interview of candidate for a Dev position that was an "expert" at SQL. She was very proud of the fact that she had worked with every version since SQL6.5.
I gave her a piece of paper, that had a single question.
DECLARE @Num INT;
Please write a SQL statement that will evaluate @Num, and return one of the following results
If @Num is divisible by 3, return "Fizz"
If @Num is divisible by 5, return "Buzz"
If @Num is divisible by 15, return "FizzBuzz"
She stared at the paper for about 5 mins, then burst into tears. The request was way beyond her ability
I'd need to check what the modulo operator is in SQL (% ? ), since I don't use it particularly often, but other than that, it's a trivial problem.

We can always make this a little more interesting
😎
DECLARE @Num INT =15;

SELECT ISNULL(UNCOMPRESS(NULLIF(SIGN(@Num % 3),1) + 1181317754),N'') + ISNULL(UNCOMPRESS(NULLIF(SIGN(@Num % 5),1) + 1114995322),N'');

...and now the interviewer is crying😛

Eirikur Eiriksson SSC Guru Points: 182912 More actions · Answer 4

Grant Fritchey - Thursday, July 6, 2017 6:40 AM
Thom A - Thursday, July 6, 2017 6:07 AM
GilaMonster - Thursday, July 6, 2017 5:55 AM
DesNorton - Wednesday, July 5, 2017 11:13 PM
@Grant Fritchey
I believe that congratulations are in order, sir.
Or condolences, whiskey and a shoulder to cry on. 🙂
How about a monkey Shoulder?
Now we're talking!

Should go nice with Ed's pig shoulder
😎
(from the smoker :D)

Eric M Russell SSC Guru Points: 125561 More actions · Answer 5

Eirikur Eiriksson - Thursday, July 6, 2017 6:56 AM
GilaMonster - Thursday, July 6, 2017 6:37 AM
DesNorton - Wednesday, July 5, 2017 10:08 PM
Brandie Tarvin - Wednesday, July 5, 2017 8:48 AM
Speaking of excellence... If someone puts "expert at ..." on their resume, how large a grain of salt do you take it with? Is it an automatic turnoff or a warning flag?
Or do you accept it at face value until interview time?
I sat in on an interview of candidate for a Dev position that was an "expert" at SQL. She was very proud of the fact that she had worked with every version since SQL6.5.
I gave her a piece of paper, that had a single question.
DECLARE @Num INT;
Please write a SQL statement that will evaluate @Num, and return one of the following results
If @Num is divisible by 3, return "Fizz"
If @Num is divisible by 5, return "Buzz"
If @Num is divisible by 15, return "FizzBuzz"
She stared at the paper for about 5 mins, then burst into tears. The request was way beyond her ability
I'd need to check what the modulo operator is in SQL (% ? ), since I don't use it particularly often, but other than that, it's a trivial problem.
We can always make this a little more interesting
😎
DECLARE @Num INT =15;
SELECT ISNULL(UNCOMPRESS(NULLIF(SIGN(@Num % 3),1) + 1181317754),N'') + ISNULL(UNCOMPRESS(NULLIF(SIGN(@Num % 5),1) + 1114995322),N'');
...and now the interviewer is crying😛

FizzBuzz is an interesting programming problem, and just for kicks I posted my own single SELECT solution a few months back. However, in my opinion it's actually not a good SQL Server interview question, because it's not typical of the type query that a T-SQL programmer would be tasked with coding day to day on the job. You might as well ask them if they know how to tie balloon animals.

"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho

Luis Cazares SSC Guru Points: 183706 More actions · Answer 6

Eric M Russell - Thursday, July 6, 2017 7:30 AM
FizzBuzz is an interesting programming problem, and just for kicks I posted my own single SELECT solution a few months back. However, in my opinion it's actually not a good SQL Server interview question, because it's not typical of the type query that a T-SQL programmer would be tasked with coding day to day on the job. You might as well ask them if they know how to tie balloon animals.

For me, it can work great as screening question. It can be a simple select statement or it can be really complex, so you can see a bit more of the coding style and way of thinking of the candidate. I wouldn't offer a position based only on that, but it can help in many ways.

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

Grant Fritchey SSC Guru Points: 398890 More actions · Answer 7

Eric M Russell - Thursday, July 6, 2017 7:30 AM
FizzBuzz is an interesting programming problem, and just for kicks I posted my own single SELECT solution a few months back. However, in my opinion it's actually not a good SQL Server interview question, because it's not typical of the type query that a T-SQL programmer would be tasked with coding day to day on the job. You might as well ask them if they know how to tie balloon animals.

Do you know how to tie balloon animals?

"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt

Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning

Grant Fritchey SSC Guru Points: 398890 More actions · Answer 8

DesNorton - Wednesday, July 5, 2017 10:08 PM
Brandie Tarvin - Wednesday, July 5, 2017 8:48 AM
Speaking of excellence... If someone puts "expert at ..." on their resume, how large a grain of salt do you take it with? Is it an automatic turnoff or a warning flag?
Or do you accept it at face value until interview time?
I sat in on an interview of candidate for a Dev position that was an "expert" at SQL. She was very proud of the fact that she had worked with every version since SQL6.5.
I gave her a piece of paper, that had a single question.
DECLARE @Num INT;
Please write a SQL statement that will evaluate @Num, and return one of the following results
If @Num is divisible by 3, return "Fizz"
If @Num is divisible by 5, return "Buzz"
If @Num is divisible by 15, return "FizzBuzz"
She stared at the paper for about 5 mins, then burst into tears. The request was way beyond her ability

BTW, 10 year old article on this.

"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt

Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning

Ed Wagner SSC Guru Points: 287026 More actions · Answer 9

Eirikur Eiriksson - Thursday, July 6, 2017 7:02 AM
Grant Fritchey - Thursday, July 6, 2017 6:40 AM
Thom A - Thursday, July 6, 2017 6:07 AM
GilaMonster - Thursday, July 6, 2017 5:55 AM
DesNorton - Wednesday, July 5, 2017 11:13 PM
@Grant Fritchey
I believe that congratulations are in order, sir.
Or condolences, whiskey and a shoulder to cry on. 🙂
How about a monkey Shoulder?
Now we're talking!
Should go nice with Ed's pig shoulder
😎
(from the smoker :D)

It turned out great. The shoulders had one of the best crusts I've ever developed, pulled easily and had great flavor. The pork loin had a nice, deep smoke ring and, because I smoked it to temperature, didn't dry out at all. My grand experiment was smoked macaroni and cheese and it got rave reviews. All in all, the many-hour vigil was well worth it.

Tally Tables - Performance Personified
String Splitting with True Performance
Best practices on how to ask questions

Tom_Hogan Hall of Fame Points: 3896 More actions · Answer 10

Just started walking through the procedures / SSIS packages for the application I'm now responsible for at my new gig.

Why do so few developers care about maintainability? There's no documentation and barely any comments in the code. In the SSIS, the control flow doesn't really flow. There are multiple tasks called File System Task, SQL Task, etc. In several package, I have multiple database connections for the same database (same type too) which are each used in the various tasks. They also point to localhost. Everything is hard-coded in the package so moving from Dev to Test to Prod must have been fun. It's going to take me weeks to figure out what's going on (there's probably some good stuff here, I just need to find it). I wish this was the first time I've run into this.

I do think I've figured out my specialty - "Tom Hogan, Sr Database Developer / Development DBA; specializes in figuring out what the previous developers did and making it maintainable."

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

Ed Wagner - Thursday, July 6, 2017 7:59 AM
Eirikur Eiriksson - Thursday, July 6, 2017 7:02 AM
Grant Fritchey - Thursday, July 6, 2017 6:40 AM
Thom A - Thursday, July 6, 2017 6:07 AM
GilaMonster - Thursday, July 6, 2017 5:55 AM
DesNorton - Wednesday, July 5, 2017 11:13 PM
@Grant Fritchey
I believe that congratulations are in order, sir.
Or condolences, whiskey and a shoulder to cry on. 🙂
How about a monkey Shoulder?
Now we're talking!
Should go nice with Ed's pig shoulder
😎
(from the smoker :D)
It turned out great. The shoulders had one of the best crusts I've ever developed, pulled easily and had great flavor. The pork loin had a nice, deep smoke ring and, because I smoked it to temperature, didn't dry out at all. My grand experiment was smoked macaroni and cheese and it got rave reviews. All in all, the many-hour vigil was well worth it.

A few weeks ago now I picked up the same smoker Neil Burton was raving about and since then I've had the chance to fire it up three or four times. Each time has been quite a learning experience, especially maintaining a low, steady temperature. Some of the results have been spectacular, but only the chicken so far. Whole legs soaked overnight in spices and maple syrup were particularly good smoked with oak logs, as was a large corn-fed chicken, spatchcocked.
I'd love to know how you do a whole pork shoulder, it sounds just awesome - but if the small-ish joint I tried is anything to go by, you can say goodbye to crispy crackling, which is highly prized over here.

^{“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

Lynn Pettis SSC Guru Points: 442467 More actions · Answer 12

DesNorton - Wednesday, July 5, 2017 10:08 PM
Brandie Tarvin - Wednesday, July 5, 2017 8:48 AM
Speaking of excellence... If someone puts "expert at ..." on their resume, how large a grain of salt do you take it with? Is it an automatic turnoff or a warning flag?
Or do you accept it at face value until interview time?
I sat in on an interview of candidate for a Dev position that was an "expert" at SQL. She was very proud of the fact that she had worked with every version since SQL6.5.
I gave her a piece of paper, that had a single question.
DECLARE @Num INT;
Please write a SQL statement that will evaluate @Num, and return one of the following results
If @Num is divisible by 3, return "Fizz"
If @Num is divisible by 5, return "Buzz"
If @Num is divisible by 15, return "FizzBuzz"
She stared at the paper for about 5 mins, then burst into tears. The request was way beyond her ability

Well, I have worked with SQL Server since SQL 6.5, and I am glad for it (wouldn't necessarily say very proud) as it started me on the path I followed the past 20+ years. I did learn as each new version came out that it was getting harder to be an expert on the entire product suite. As for the FizzBuzz, not posting it but I did just write one in less than 5 minutes that did it for values of n from 1 to 10,000. Of course I have also seen this numerous times over the years.

My question, did you care how it was written or for how many values it was to run? I'm just curious. More than 12 years ago I would have used a cursor as I didn't know about Tally or Number tables. Today I would use a dynamic Tally table.

Eric M Russell SSC Guru Points: 125561 More actions · Answer 13

Grant Fritchey - Thursday, July 6, 2017 7:45 AM
Eric M Russell - Thursday, July 6, 2017 7:30 AM
FizzBuzz is an interesting programming problem, and just for kicks I posted my own single SELECT solution a few months back. However, in my opinion it's actually not a good SQL Server interview question, because it's not typical of the type query that a T-SQL programmer would be tasked with coding day to day on the job. You might as well ask them if they know how to tie balloon animals.
Do you know how to tie balloon animals?

Ummm... YES! While employed at ABC Corp I was the balloon animal team lead, responsible for mentoring junior DBAs in tying techniques and implemented best practices for deployment to production. But I was told by the recruiter that balloon tying would not be required?? :unsure:

"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho

Lynn Pettis SSC Guru Points: 442467 More actions · Answer 14

Eric M Russell - Thursday, July 6, 2017 7:30 AM
FizzBuzz is an interesting programming problem, and just for kicks I posted my own single SELECT solution a few months back. However, in my opinion it's actually not a good SQL Server interview question, because it's not typical of the type query that a T-SQL programmer would be tasked with coding day to day on the job. You might as well ask them if they know how to tie balloon animals.

As mentioned, I wouldn't use it to base an offer but it can serve as a way to learn about how an individual solves a problem. Just from the description given there are several questions that could be asked before one even starts writing a single line of code.

Phil Parkin SSC Guru Points: 246965 More actions · Answer 15

Tom_Hogan - Thursday, July 6, 2017 8:06 AM
Just started walking through the procedures / SSIS packages for the application I'm now responsible for at my new gig.
Why do so few developers care about maintainability? There's no documentation and barely any comments in the code. In the SSIS, the control flow doesn't really flow. There are multiple tasks called File System Task, SQL Task, etc. In several package, I have multiple database connections for the same database (same type too) which are each used in the various tasks. They also point to localhost. Everything is hard-coded in the package so moving from Dev to Test to Prod must have been fun. It's going to take me weeks to figure out what's going on (there's probably some good stuff here, I just need to find it). I wish this was the first time I've run into this.
I do think I've figured out my specialty - "Tom Hogan, Sr Database Developer / Development DBA; specializes in figuring out what the previous developers did and making it maintainable."

localhost as default instance is fairly good practice, IMO, assuming all dev work is done locally. Of course, there should be a single connection for each relevant DB on localhost to allow easy parameterization at deploy time.

The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence
- Martin Rees
The absence of consumable DDL, sample data and desired results is, however, evidence of the absence of my response
- Phil Parkin