Are the posted questions getting worse?

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Are the posted questions getting worse?

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Grant Fritchey SSC Guru Points: 398890 More actions · Answer 1

"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

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004362 More actions · Answer 2

Grant Fritchey (10/7/2009)
As far as targets go, there are two types of vehicles on the ocean. Targets and submarines.

Heh... I was scrolling "up" through the thread when I saw this... I knew it had to be the "other bubble-head" that posted that.

Man, I wish we would have had the time to throw a couple of cold ones back together. I've got some great stories about what we did to the "Connie" during some, ummmm... "exercises". 😉

--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: 1004362 More actions · Answer 3

Jan Van der Eecken (10/7/2009)
Hehe, join the club. Last time we played I hit a marshal by mistake coz his gear was indistinguishable from the other players. He wasn't too impressed. Yeah, well...

I thought the marshal was the "goal". 😛

--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)

Jack Corbett SSC Guru Points: 184394 More actions · Answer 4

Grant Fritchey (10/8/2009)
Arggghhh. This is just frustrating.

Hey, you must have helped. The problem is solved;-)

Jack Corbett
Consultant - Straight Path Solutions
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Roy Ernest SSC-Dedicated Points: 38780 More actions · Answer 5

Grant Fritchey (10/8/2009)
Arggghhh. This is just frustrating.

That was like pulling teeth from a tiger...heheheh

-Roy

Grant Fritchey SSC Guru Points: 398890 More actions · Answer 6

Jeff Moden (10/8/2009)
Grant Fritchey (10/7/2009)
As far as targets go, there are two types of vehicles on the ocean. Targets and submarines.
Heh... I was scrolling "up" through the thread when I saw this... I knew it had to be the "other bubble-head" that posted that.
Man, I wish we would have had the time to throw a couple of cold ones back together. I've got some great stories about what we did to the "Connie" during some, ummmm... "exercises". 😉

Me too. But the kids were on their own, so no choice. You'll be in Seattle in three weeks?

"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

Jan Van der Eecken SSCrazy Eights Points: 9029 More actions · Answer 7

Jeff Moden (10/8/2009)
Jan Van der Eecken (10/7/2009)
Hehe, join the club. Last time we played I hit a marshal by mistake coz his gear was indistinguishable from the other players. He wasn't too impressed. Yeah, well...
I thought the marshal was the "goal". 😛

Nah, the guy in the "goal" is called "keeper" 😉

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RBarryYoung SSC Guru Points: 143329 More actions · Answer 8

Dave Ballantyne (10/8/2009)
Grant Fritchey (10/8/2009)
Hammmer. That's the answer. A good hammer will fix or replace just about anything.
Must of skipped over that chapter in your book.

It was one of those "Free On-line Bonus" Chapters. I think you have to go to HomeDepot.com to download it.

😀

[font="Times New Roman"]-- RBarryYoung[/font], [font="Times New Roman"] (302)375-0451[/font] blog: MovingSQL.com, Twitter: @RBarryYoung [font="Arial Black"]
Proactive Performance Solutions, Inc. [/font][font="Verdana"] "Performance is our middle name."[/font]

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004362 More actions · Answer 9

Heh... I know it's a couple/three months old now but I've not seen it before. I've been criticised by one of the big dogs (two, actually. I heard the method came up on the 24 hours of PASS, as well). But... he hasn't said that he's been able to break the damn thing either. I won't sign up for the site to submit a rebuttal because they want way too much personal information. Here's the site...

http://www.sqlmag.com/Articles/ArticleID/102251/102251.html

As a side bar, he also said the method wasn't set-based because the method didn't treat the whole set the same way. C'mon.... even if that were true, who cares? It does, in fact, blow the doors off all other T-SQL methods and comes close to beating CLRs. 😉

And wouldn't he really get upset if he knew the only reason I added the INDEX(0) option was to try to make nay-sayers like him happy?

So, I'll make it official... the INDEX(0) table hint is just what it says in the comment in the article above... it's "warm fuzzy" stuff that doesn't change a thing except slow the code down a bit (a lot, actually). The article states that a cursor takes 144 seconds to do the million row running total and the quirky update method (copied from "The Thread") takes 35 seconds. Well, if you're doing a single table (like a temp table and it should ALWAYS be a single table update) running total, you can safely leave out the INDEX(0) table hint and the run time will plummet to somewhere between 3 and 7 seconds. The TABLOCKX hint isn't necessary on Temp tables (IS required on permanent tables) but does eliminate a wad of row locks that will eventually lead to a table lock in favor of a single table lock. The MAXDOP 1 thing is absolutely necessary to prevent parallelism. Of course, the other rules concerning the 2 and 3 part assignments and the clustered index still apply, as well.

Just once I wish these folks would prove that they can break it without breaking the rules for its proper usage before they bad mouth this very old method.

--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)

David Burrows SSC Guru Points: 65142 More actions · Answer 10

Just once I wish these folks would prove that they can break it without breaking the rules for its proper usage before they bad mouth this very old method.

Here! Here! 😀

Go Sic 'em! Jeff :w00t:

Far away is close at hand in the images of elsewhere.
Anon.

spaghettidba SSC Guru Points: 105732 More actions · Answer 11

I had a hot discussion with Joe Celko some days ago about the quirky update.

He doesn't seem to like it.

I told him I use the quirky update expecting it to break at some point with service packs or new sql versions, but I use it in the meanwhile because it's fast and I would care about the problems when they arise.

He said that he would never step on a bridge built by an engineer that works this way....

Good point, actually.

-- Gianluca Sartori

Matt Whitfield SSCrazy Eights Points: 8107 More actions · Answer 12

I have to say, that there's a lot of people in the world who get on their high horses about 'compliance' and 'maintainability', but rarely dip into actual mechanics. The number of times I've seen people ask a simple question on a site like stack overflow, only to be lambasted by a whole load of people who tell them 'you should be making it differently' or 'the fact you're asking this question means you've totally misunderstood'. Those answers tend to get voted up. The person who gives the simple, succinct answer to the question actually asked gets 0. Or even voted down.

I just sometimes wonder where this cotton wool world actually is - because in my world, there are real-world constraints as well as design constraints, and I have to find a good balance between the two. For example, a very simple thing - while writing the lexical parser for my editor, I found it was hugely quicker to create a static array of booleans which indicate which characters are valid in an identifier, rather than using the static methods on the char class. So i'll probably get slated for that.

But - for the people that will use my product - it will be much faster in actual use.

And as for the 'it has to be well documented' thing - well... In making my schema comparison engine I had to post up on maybe 10 different MSDN topics with community content saying 'this is wrong', 'this is something that is missing' etc. So, go figure.

At the end of the day, my focus is on the people who use a product or system, and I think a lot of developers tend to forget that.

Just my 2p. Or 3.19639 cents. 😀

Atlantis Interactive - SQL Server Tools
My blog[/url]
Why I wrote a sql query analyzer clone

spaghettidba SSC Guru Points: 105732 More actions · Answer 13

Matt Whitfield (10/9/2009)
Just my 2p. Or 3.19639 cents. 😀

EUR or USD?

And, don't forget, the 2 cents are definitely mine...:-D

-- Gianluca Sartori

Matt Whitfield SSCrazy Eights Points: 8107 More actions · Answer 14

Sterling - GBP 😀

Do I get to keep the remaining 1.19639 cents or is there tax?

Atlantis Interactive - SQL Server Tools
My blog[/url]
Why I wrote a sql query analyzer clone

spaghettidba SSC Guru Points: 105732 More actions · Answer 15

spaghettidba

SSC Guru

Points: 105732

October 9, 2009 at 2:49 am

#1063926

:hehe:

-- Gianluca Sartori