Are the posted questions getting worse?

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Are the posted questions getting worse?

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ChrisM@Work SSC Guru Points: 186127 More actions · Answer 1

Jeff Moden - Friday, January 19, 2018 6:48 AM
ChrisM@Work - Friday, January 19, 2018 6:26 AM
Ed Wagner - Friday, January 19, 2018 6:01 AM
ChrisM@Work - Friday, January 19, 2018 2:15 AM
Jeff Moden - Thursday, January 18, 2018 5:16 PM
Lynn Pettis - Thursday, January 18, 2018 9:01 AM
Jeff, Kevin Tate was doing a SQL Server Indexing 101 at our user group meeting last night. When index maintenance came up I asked if he had read any of the posts where you commented that you needed to go beyond index fragmentation when looking at index reorgs/rebuilds, he hadn't. Is there a possibility that you may be working on an article or three on what you have been finding in the near future? There are some of us that want to know.
Awesome... thanks for the continued encouragement, ol' friend.
For starters, I'm working on the presentation on the subject that I'm going to give my user group. I expect it to take nearly 2 hours and I have to make sure my ducks are lined up. Ed Wagner and I have done a reboot of the "SPID" user group (SQL PASS In Detroit) and we didn't want to have to sweat finding speakers every month. At the same time, I had this "plan" to cover my now more than 2 year experiment of not doing any index maintenance on my production boxes and wanted to also explain how that notion got started.
I did a presentation on CROSS TABS and PIVOTS using a 12 million row table (about a million rows per month) and took them through a bunch of optimization techniques ending with why you might want to build an NCI with a duplication of the keys of the clustered index to quickly isolate and aggregate a month's worth of data (million rows) using a CROSS TAB or PIVOT in less than 600 milliseconds. Think of it as the first introduction to the true power that can be realized from proper indexing along with a little "Divide'n'Conquer".
Then, Ed Wagner gave a fabulous talk on indexing that he derived from the PreCon that he and I did for Pittsburgh in October of 2016 to further demonstrate the power of indexes and how the wrong indexes can actually kill performance worse than if you had no indexes, etc, etc.
From there, we really lucked out to continue the "Index" theme. Mr. Brent Ozar has agreed to come to Michigan in February to do his presentation on why regular index maintenance based on logical fragmentation (which almost everyone does) can be (and was for Ed and I both) a total waste of time. In April, Mr. Paul Randal is doing a remote presentation on the subject of indexing where he also talks about the "other kind" of index fragmentation (don't want to cough up any spoilers on that if you've not seen it before). In May, I'm going to stitch it all together with a case study on my 2 year experiment and some test code that demonstrates what happens to an index over a period of a year (measured every hour for 10 hours per day) both with and without index maintenance, the fallacy of using REORGANIZE, how to auto-magically pick the "best" FILL FACTORs (by index) if you insist on index maintenance and why, the fact that most people are defragging after the most damage is already done, how to identify indexes that actually DO benefit from defragging, etc, etc, etc, all in a very "Alice's Restaurant Fashion" with charts and graphs "with circles, arrows, and a paragraph on the back of each one".
And, Yes Sir, one of the sides to all this is a couple (maybe three) articles on the subject for SSC. Not 100% sure when I'll get to that because I have to finish the presentation first and foremost. Another "side goal" is (possibly) turning it and a couple of additional related subjects into a PreCon so I can afford to get to your SQL Saturday (definitely on my bucket list) and maybe a presentation for the PASS Summit (the only way that I can come close to affording such a thing because I'm just a regular Joe with no sponsors). 😉
May huh? Do you allow guests into your user group?

Absolutely we allow guests and it would be great to meet you in person. That's quite a trip. Are you going to be in the US in May?

[/quote]
It's my turn to visit an old friend, he's in Miami but your internal flights aren't horrendously expensive. It'd be, for me, the trip of a lifetime to visit you also and hear first-hand your findings. I was planning to go sooner, in between finishing this gig at the end of next month and starting the next one, but I'll willingly change the date for this. Florida will have defrosted by then, too 🙂
You guys have caused quite a stir here.[/quote]
That would be awesome, Chris. There's probably no chance of me ever getting to Europe and you're one of the people on my bucket list.[/quote]
Crikey. No pressure then! Thanks for your kind words old friend. I'll be in touch.

^{“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

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004363 More actions · Answer 2

jasona.work - Friday, January 19, 2018 5:58 AM
Well, I know I'm going.

Looking forward to it, Jason. Tell others because we're definitely looking to grow the group here. I just hope we have enough room. 40 is about the max capacity for the room we use.

--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: 1004363 More actions · Answer 3

ChrisM@Work - Friday, January 19, 2018 6:26 AM
You guys have caused quite a stir here.

Heh... I have to "blame" it all on Brent. It was his suggestion via some of the 'tubes he made on the subject. When I first heard his suggestion nearly 3 years ago, I mentally accused him of drinking bong water through two straws. Now, I'm sharing one of the straws because it's damned good bong water! 😉 My studies during this two year experiment and the proofs and methods that I've been working these last couple of months have been a real eye opener for me. THANK YOU MR. OZAR!!!

--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)

Hugo Kornelis SSC Guru Points: 64790 More actions · Answer 4

Jeff Moden - Friday, January 19, 2018 6:42 AM
Hugo Kornelis - Friday, January 19, 2018 3:42 AM
Jeff Moden - Thursday, January 18, 2018 4:35 PM
Steve Jones - SSC Editor - Thursday, January 18, 2018 10:53 AM
Jeff Moden - Thursday, January 18, 2018 8:00 AM
Yep... and it's not just cookies, either. They use a thing called "spotlight pixels" which doesn't need cookies.
Shifting gears, I'm really pissed at some of the recruiter's web sites. I'm not sure how they do it but I saw an interesting job posting (I'm not looking for a new job... just interested in what people post for job descriptions) and visited the web site to read the rest. For the next 3 days, some recruiter from that company kept sending me emails that said they saw me look at the job and did I have any questions. I've run into such a thing many times now. Although I don't like what folks have to do to become GDPR compliant, I can definitely see why a whole lot of consumers want it. I think I'll buy an IOT toilet so that I can express my opinion to these recruiters in a manner more faithful to my true feelings. 😉
Recruiting is a tough business. Like selling cars. IT's a numbers game and being pushy pays off. Being passive gets to fired.
The GDPR will be interesting. If you engage with someone, you've created a business relationship, so it's not like someone can just say stop. You have to terminate the relationship, and then they have 30 days to respond. It's not quite what many people think, especially with the right to be forgotten. That's not easy, and it's mostly for public stuff. Private records, like sales, will still remain.
Understood... but I didn't give the buggers my email address. I just visited the site.
It is not uncommon for companies to automatically capture all website visits and mark them as "suspects" or "prospects" in the CRM system, with appropriate actions to the salespeople to follow up.
The only thing they can get directly from tracking the website is (as far as I know) your IP address. But there are methods to cross-correlate that to other information. For instance, most people have a fixed IP address; as soon as you enter your email somewhere it can be correlated to the IP for later visits. There are also public databases that map an IP address to a location on the earth.
Privacy is mostly an illusion nowadays.
Heh... any way to do the "Borg" thing and "rotate shield frequencies" (IP Addresses)?
The key here is that I think it's terribly presumptuous (to the point of being rude) to interpret a visit to a website as implied authorization to contact me. It's as bad as the damned popup ads that think I'm in the market to buy a Lexus just because I visited a site wanting to know a bit more about their technology.

https://blog.malwarebytes.com/101/2016/07/how-to-protect-your-ip-address/
https://whatismyipaddress.com/hide-ip

Hugo Kornelis, SQL Server/Data Platform MVP (2006-2016)
Visit my SQL Server blog: https://sqlserverfast.com/blog/
SQL Server Execution Plan Reference: https://sqlserverfast.com/epr/

Ed Wagner SSC Guru Points: 287026 More actions · Answer 5

ChrisM@Work - Friday, January 19, 2018 6:58 AM
Jeff Moden - Friday, January 19, 2018 6:48 AM
ChrisM@Work - Friday, January 19, 2018 6:26 AM
Ed Wagner - Friday, January 19, 2018 6:01 AM
ChrisM@Work - Friday, January 19, 2018 2:15 AM
Jeff Moden - Thursday, January 18, 2018 5:16 PM
Lynn Pettis - Thursday, January 18, 2018 9:01 AM
Jeff, Kevin Tate was doing a SQL Server Indexing 101 at our user group meeting last night. When index maintenance came up I asked if he had read any of the posts where you commented that you needed to go beyond index fragmentation when looking at index reorgs/rebuilds, he hadn't. Is there a possibility that you may be working on an article or three on what you have been finding in the near future? There are some of us that want to know.
Awesome... thanks for the continued encouragement, ol' friend.
For starters, I'm working on the presentation on the subject that I'm going to give my user group. I expect it to take nearly 2 hours and I have to make sure my ducks are lined up. Ed Wagner and I have done a reboot of the "SPID" user group (SQL PASS In Detroit) and we didn't want to have to sweat finding speakers every month. At the same time, I had this "plan" to cover my now more than 2 year experiment of not doing any index maintenance on my production boxes and wanted to also explain how that notion got started.
I did a presentation on CROSS TABS and PIVOTS using a 12 million row table (about a million rows per month) and took them through a bunch of optimization techniques ending with why you might want to build an NCI with a duplication of the keys of the clustered index to quickly isolate and aggregate a month's worth of data (million rows) using a CROSS TAB or PIVOT in less than 600 milliseconds. Think of it as the first introduction to the true power that can be realized from proper indexing along with a little "Divide'n'Conquer".
Then, Ed Wagner gave a fabulous talk on indexing that he derived from the PreCon that he and I did for Pittsburgh in October of 2016 to further demonstrate the power of indexes and how the wrong indexes can actually kill performance worse than if you had no indexes, etc, etc.
From there, we really lucked out to continue the "Index" theme. Mr. Brent Ozar has agreed to come to Michigan in February to do his presentation on why regular index maintenance based on logical fragmentation (which almost everyone does) can be (and was for Ed and I both) a total waste of time. In April, Mr. Paul Randal is doing a remote presentation on the subject of indexing where he also talks about the "other kind" of index fragmentation (don't want to cough up any spoilers on that if you've not seen it before). In May, I'm going to stitch it all together with a case study on my 2 year experiment and some test code that demonstrates what happens to an index over a period of a year (measured every hour for 10 hours per day) both with and without index maintenance, the fallacy of using REORGANIZE, how to auto-magically pick the "best" FILL FACTORs (by index) if you insist on index maintenance and why, the fact that most people are defragging after the most damage is already done, how to identify indexes that actually DO benefit from defragging, etc, etc, etc, all in a very "Alice's Restaurant Fashion" with charts and graphs "with circles, arrows, and a paragraph on the back of each one".
And, Yes Sir, one of the sides to all this is a couple (maybe three) articles on the subject for SSC. Not 100% sure when I'll get to that because I have to finish the presentation first and foremost. Another "side goal" is (possibly) turning it and a couple of additional related subjects into a PreCon so I can afford to get to your SQL Saturday (definitely on my bucket list) and maybe a presentation for the PASS Summit (the only way that I can come close to affording such a thing because I'm just a regular Joe with no sponsors). 😉
May huh? Do you allow guests into your user group?
Absolutely we allow guests and it would be great to meet you in person. That's quite a trip. Are you going to be in the US in May?

It's my turn to visit an old friend, he's in Miami but your internal flights aren't horrendously expensive. It'd be, for me, the trip of a lifetime to visit you also and hear first-hand your findings. I was planning to go sooner, in between finishing this gig at the end of next month and starting the next one, but I'll willingly change the date for this. Florida will have defrosted by then, too 🙂
You guys have caused quite a stir here.[/quote]
That would be awesome, Chris. There's probably no chance of me ever getting to Europe and you're one of the people on my bucket list.[/quote]
Crikey. No pressure then! Thanks for your kind words old friend. I'll be in touch.[/quote]
Wow! That would definitely be awesome. The meeting is scheduled for May 11, 2018 and it's in Livonia, MI. The chapter's site is http://detroit.pass.org. I try to keep it up to date, within a day or two of each event. It'll be great to meet you in person. There are a few bars in the area, but I'm not the best judge if they have anything you would recognize as beer.

BTW, Jeff, this will certainly be our chapter's record for distance traveled. No pressure on you either. 😉

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

ChrisM@Work SSC Guru Points: 186127 More actions · Answer 6

Ed Wagner - Friday, January 19, 2018 7:52 AM
ChrisM@Work - Friday, January 19, 2018 6:58 AM
Jeff Moden - Friday, January 19, 2018 6:48 AM
ChrisM@Work - Friday, January 19, 2018 6:26 AM
Ed Wagner - Friday, January 19, 2018 6:01 AM
ChrisM@Work - Friday, January 19, 2018 2:15 AM
Jeff Moden - Thursday, January 18, 2018 5:16 PM
Lynn Pettis - Thursday, January 18, 2018 9:01 AM
Jeff, Kevin Tate was doing a SQL Server Indexing 101 at our user group meeting last night. When index maintenance came up I asked if he had read any of the posts where you commented that you needed to go beyond index fragmentation when looking at index reorgs/rebuilds, he hadn't. Is there a possibility that you may be working on an article or three on what you have been finding in the near future? There are some of us that want to know.
Awesome... thanks for the continued encouragement, ol' friend.
For starters, I'm working on the presentation on the subject that I'm going to give my user group. I expect it to take nearly 2 hours and I have to make sure my ducks are lined up. Ed Wagner and I have done a reboot of the "SPID" user group (SQL PASS In Detroit) and we didn't want to have to sweat finding speakers every month. At the same time, I had this "plan" to cover my now more than 2 year experiment of not doing any index maintenance on my production boxes and wanted to also explain how that notion got started.
I did a presentation on CROSS TABS and PIVOTS using a 12 million row table (about a million rows per month) and took them through a bunch of optimization techniques ending with why you might want to build an NCI with a duplication of the keys of the clustered index to quickly isolate and aggregate a month's worth of data (million rows) using a CROSS TAB or PIVOT in less than 600 milliseconds. Think of it as the first introduction to the true power that can be realized from proper indexing along with a little "Divide'n'Conquer".
Then, Ed Wagner gave a fabulous talk on indexing that he derived from the PreCon that he and I did for Pittsburgh in October of 2016 to further demonstrate the power of indexes and how the wrong indexes can actually kill performance worse than if you had no indexes, etc, etc.
From there, we really lucked out to continue the "Index" theme. Mr. Brent Ozar has agreed to come to Michigan in February to do his presentation on why regular index maintenance based on logical fragmentation (which almost everyone does) can be (and was for Ed and I both) a total waste of time. In April, Mr. Paul Randal is doing a remote presentation on the subject of indexing where he also talks about the "other kind" of index fragmentation (don't want to cough up any spoilers on that if you've not seen it before). In May, I'm going to stitch it all together with a case study on my 2 year experiment and some test code that demonstrates what happens to an index over a period of a year (measured every hour for 10 hours per day) both with and without index maintenance, the fallacy of using REORGANIZE, how to auto-magically pick the "best" FILL FACTORs (by index) if you insist on index maintenance and why, the fact that most people are defragging after the most damage is already done, how to identify indexes that actually DO benefit from defragging, etc, etc, etc, all in a very "Alice's Restaurant Fashion" with charts and graphs "with circles, arrows, and a paragraph on the back of each one".
And, Yes Sir, one of the sides to all this is a couple (maybe three) articles on the subject for SSC. Not 100% sure when I'll get to that because I have to finish the presentation first and foremost. Another "side goal" is (possibly) turning it and a couple of additional related subjects into a PreCon so I can afford to get to your SQL Saturday (definitely on my bucket list) and maybe a presentation for the PASS Summit (the only way that I can come close to affording such a thing because I'm just a regular Joe with no sponsors). 😉
May huh? Do you allow guests into your user group?
Absolutely we allow guests and it would be great to meet you in person. That's quite a trip. Are you going to be in the US in May?

It's my turn to visit an old friend, he's in Miami but your internal flights aren't horrendously expensive. It'd be, for me, the trip of a lifetime to visit you also and hear first-hand your findings. I was planning to go sooner, in between finishing this gig at the end of next month and starting the next one, but I'll willingly change the date for this. Florida will have defrosted by then, too 🙂
You guys have caused quite a stir here.
That would be awesome, Chris. There's probably no chance of me ever getting to Europe and you're one of the people on my bucket list.[/quote]
Crikey. No pressure then! Thanks for your kind words old friend. I'll be in touch.[/quote]
Wow! That would definitely be awesome. The meeting is scheduled for May 11, 2018 and it's in Livonia, MI. The chapter's site is http://detroit.pass.org. I try to keep it up to date, within a day or two of each event. It'll be great to meet you in person. There are a few bars in the area, but I'm not the best judge if they have anything you would recognize as beer.

BTW, Jeff, this will certainly be our chapter's record for distance traveled. No pressure on you either. 😉[/quote]
Only 15 miles from Detroit, easy peasy 🙂

^{“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

jasona.work SSC Guru Points: 50117 More actions · Answer 7

ChrisM@Work - Friday, January 19, 2018 8:24 AM
Only 15 miles from Detroit, easy peasy 🙂

You don't know what our roads are like around here, do you?
:laugh:
Imagine a rough dirt road, that's actually paved, that's had a pack of mutant gophers digging holes all over it. And people are driving at 20-30mph over the speed limit or 10-20mph under (often in the same lane.)
😀

ChrisM@Work SSC Guru Points: 186127 More actions · Answer 8

jasona.work - Friday, January 19, 2018 9:52 AM
ChrisM@Work - Friday, January 19, 2018 8:24 AM
Only 15 miles from Detroit, easy peasy 🙂
You don't know what our roads are like around here, do you?
:laugh:
Imagine a rough dirt road, that's actually paved, that's had a pack of mutant gophers digging holes all over it. And people are driving at 20-30mph over the speed limit or 10-20mph under (often in the same lane.)
😀

You've just described our local motorway - that's Interstate to you 🙂

^{“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 9

ChrisM@Work - Friday, January 19, 2018 9:56 AM
jasona.work - Friday, January 19, 2018 9:52 AM
ChrisM@Work - Friday, January 19, 2018 8:24 AM
Only 15 miles from Detroit, easy peasy 🙂
You don't know what our roads are like around here, do you?
:laugh:
Imagine a rough dirt road, that's actually paved, that's had a pack of mutant gophers digging holes all over it. And people are driving at 20-30mph over the speed limit or 10-20mph under (often in the same lane.)
😀
You've just described our local motorway - that's Interstate to you 🙂

Chris, I was thinking same thing even though it has been 36 years sing I was in England.

Luis Cazares SSC Guru Points: 183706 More actions · Answer 10

Lynn Pettis - Friday, January 19, 2018 10:52 AM
ChrisM@Work - Friday, January 19, 2018 9:56 AM
jasona.work - Friday, January 19, 2018 9:52 AM
ChrisM@Work - Friday, January 19, 2018 8:24 AM
Only 15 miles from Detroit, easy peasy 🙂
You don't know what our roads are like around here, do you?
:laugh:
Imagine a rough dirt road, that's actually paved, that's had a pack of mutant gophers digging holes all over it. And people are driving at 20-30mph over the speed limit or 10-20mph under (often in the same lane.)
😀
You've just described our local motorway - that's Interstate to you 🙂
Chris, I was thinking same thing even though it has been 36 years sing I was in England.

Good thing you're not going to Mexico. :hehe:

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

Sergiy SSC Guru Points: 110208 More actions · Answer 11

They don't need gophers to dig holes in Ukrainian roads.

All the holes are predug by the previous generations.

Locals even give names to the most remarkable of the holes. Like moon craters.

_____________
Code for TallyGenerator

Ed Wagner SSC Guru Points: 287026 More actions · Answer 12

Sergiy - Friday, January 19, 2018 4:05 PM
They don't need gophers to dig holes in Ukrainian roads.All the holes are predug by the previous generations.Locals even give names to the most remarkable of the holes. Like moon craters.

So the Ukrainian roads have something in common with Michigan roads. Except not all holes are old - we have new ones forming all the time.

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

Sergiy SSC Guru Points: 110208 More actions · Answer 13

Do roads in Michigan look like this one?

https://youtu.be/-mqZ_OZVx7I

_____________
Code for TallyGenerator

jasona.work SSC Guru Points: 50117 More actions · Answer 14

Sergiy - Friday, January 19, 2018 11:42 PM
Do roads in Michigan look like this one?https://youtu.be/-mqZ_OZVx7I

That actually looked comparatively smooth versus what we're driving on right now:
https://youtu.be/EqPqqbCmL_s
I've seen potholes (thankfully not hit them,) where the rebar in the road is exposed (so at least 2-3" of concrete gone...

DesNorton SSC-Insane Points: 24387 More actions · Answer 15

jasona.work - Sunday, January 21, 2018 7:31 PM
Sergiy - Friday, January 19, 2018 11:42 PM
Do roads in Michigan look like this one?https://youtu.be/-mqZ_OZVx7I
That actually looked comparatively smooth versus what we're driving on right now:
https://youtu.be/EqPqqbCmL_s
I've seen potholes (thankfully not hit them,) where the rebar in the road is exposed (so at least 2-3" of concrete gone...

I came around a corner on the M7 (in sunny South Africa) yesterday, and had to do some emergency manouvers to avoid hitting this pothole. Just clipped the edge, and damaged both rims on my motorcycles.

How to post data/code on a forum to get the best help.