February 17, 2009 at 1:37 pm
[font="Verdana"]Please, not the "mine's bigger than yours" thing. :P[/font]
February 17, 2009 at 1:40 pm
My nominee for the week: http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic658615-1281-1.aspx?Update=1
*sigh*
[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]
February 17, 2009 at 1:43 pm
RBarryYoung (2/17/2009)
My nominee for the week: http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic658615-1281-1.aspx?Update=1*sigh*
Brillant!
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
Property of The Thread
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon
February 17, 2009 at 1:54 pm
<Sigh> Why don't people read the manuals?
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
February 17, 2009 at 1:56 pm
GSquared (2/17/2009)
RBarryYoung (2/17/2009)
My nominee for the week: http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic658615-1281-1.aspx?Update=1*sigh*
Brillant!
Friggin' right, Gus!
You know, I can understand (a little bit) not reading BOL: it's huge, intimidating, could be hard to use for the first 5 minutes. But how the heck can people get by not even reading the Freaking error message?!!!? SQL Server has some of thebest darn error messages of any product that I have ever worked with. If folks would just read them and do what they say, they wouldn't need us half of the time.
OK, maybe not half of the time, but still a lot...
[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]
February 17, 2009 at 1:59 pm
GilaMonster (2/17/2009)
<Sigh> Why don't people read the manuals?
[font="Verdana"]So we have an excuse to say "RTFM"?[/font]
February 17, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Bruce W Cassidy (2/17/2009)
GilaMonster (2/17/2009)
<Sigh> Why don't people read the manuals?[font="Verdana"]So we have an excuse to say "RTFM"?[/font]
And RTFEM (EM - Error Message)
For best practices on asking questions, please read the following article: Forum Etiquette: How to post data/code on a forum to get the best help[/url]
February 17, 2009 at 2:24 pm
or just R (read)
February 17, 2009 at 2:27 pm
GilaMonster (2/17/2009)
<Sigh> Why don't people read the manuals?
Thinking and Reading that would mean. On silver plater answer should be.
February 17, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Lynn Pettis (2/17/2009)
GilaMonster (2/17/2009)
<Sigh> Why don't people read the manuals?Thinking and Reading that would mean. On silver plater answer should be.
And yet, in this case, it is.
[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]
February 17, 2009 at 2:50 pm
RBarryYoung (2/17/2009)
Lynn Pettis (2/17/2009)
GilaMonster (2/17/2009)
<Sigh> Why don't people read the manuals?Thinking and Reading that would mean. On silver plater answer should be.
And yet, in this case, it is.
And yet, is not. Code requested, provided not.
February 17, 2009 at 2:55 pm
[font="Verdana"]A friend of mine wrote a book on why IT projects fail. One of the points he made (which I remember vividly) was that there are different levels or qualities of communication. Documentation is one of the least effective means of communication. And yet, in the IT community, we seem to treat it as the holy grail.
People ask questions because interactive communication (even via a bulletin board) is a far more effective means of communication than is reading documentation. Reading non-interactive documentation is actually an acquired skill.
If all we needed to do to learn is read, then all our schools would need to teach is reading.
Link to book (for the curious): Software Project Secrets: Why Software Projects Fail
[/font]
February 17, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Many years ago as a young airman stationed in England, my first supervisor did something I don't see many others doing. He taught me to read the technical manuals. When I first asked questions, he'd answer, but quickly he started asking me what did the manual say should be done?
It got to the point that I started reading the manuals first, then asking questions to clarify my knowledge.
I see nothing wrong with encouraging those seeking knowledge to read first. After you have read the manual, then ask questions to clarify your knowledge. I find I retain information better this way as I had to "work for it" rather than having it "handed to me" on the proverbial "silver platter".
February 17, 2009 at 3:04 pm
BOL was very nearly useless to me when I started out. Here's an example of why even a simple question can get frustrating.
I had an Access database that I was upgrading to SQL 2000 because it needed to be. In Access, I had found the Now() function, that gives the current date and time. That function doesn't work in SQL, but I hadn't yet heard of getdate() or current_timestamp().
So, what do you do? Fire up BOL and search for "now"? Useless. Search for "today's date and time"? Still won't get you what you need. "Date and time"? You'll finally find it under that one, about four links down the list, under "Date and Time function (Transact SQL)".
Let's assume you're educated enough to know that that's the one you're looking for, a T-SQL function. Here's what you get when you click the link:
The following scalar functions perform an operation on a date and time input value and return a string, numeric, or date and time value.
The Transact-SQL date and time functions and their determinism property are listed in the following table. For more information about function determinism, see Deterministic and Nondeterministic Functions.
First, you have to look up what the heck "scalar" means. Here are standard dictionary definitions:
noun: a variable quantity that cannot be resolved into components
adjective: of or relating to a directionless magnitude
Well, a date and time seem like something that can be resolved into components, and this is an adjective anyway, so is the current date and time something that could possibly be considered a directionless magnitude? I'm not so sure about that. Are AD and BC directions?
Dig a little deeper, and the Compact Oxford has just about exactly the summary definition, but Encarta Online has this clarification:
physics,mathematics quantity with magnitude but not direction: a quantity that has magnitude but no direction, e.g. mass or time
Aha! We seem to be getting somewhere! Time can be a scalar quantity!
The Free Online Dictionary of Computing goes even further, and says,
Any data type that stores a single value (e.g. a number or Boolean), as opposed to an aggregate data type that has many elements. A string is regarded as a scalar in some languages (e.g. Perl) and a vector of characters in others (e.g. C).
For the moment, lets assume that "Boolean", "aggretate data type", "elements", "string" and "vector" are all familiar, which is one heck of a big assumption, but it helps the narrative here.
So, it seems to me that the current date and time is probably a scalar value, we're definitely onto something here with this article, and we're only two words into it and have only spent about 15 minutes on this so far!
Uh oh! What's "determinism"?
Same quest, we finally find that it means you get out the same thing every time you put in the same thing, or you don't (deterministic or non). Five or so minutes later, we're now okay on the first two sentences, now we just have to pick out the correct function, assuming it's even in the list.
Let's assume a little intuition here, and the name "Day" seems more promising than "DateAdd" or "DateDiff". Might be a good place to start. Nope. Doesn't do what we need. Hmmm... maybe it's this "GetDate" or "GetUTCDate". Gonna have to look at both of them, to be sure.
GetDate has this:
Returns the current system date and time in the SQL Server 2005 standard internal format for datetime values.
GetUTCDate has this:
Returns the datetime value representing the current UTC time (Coordinated Universal Time or Greenwich Mean Time). The current UTC time is derived from the current local time and the time zone setting in the operating system of the computer on which the instance of Microsoft SQL Server is running.
Looks like GetDate() is what I need to replace Now(). Woot! I figured it out. And it took less than half an hour!
But that's half an hour on something as simple as replacing a known function from one language (VB) with an unknown but nearly identical function from another (SQL).
What happens when you try to figure out what a "correlated sub-query" is? Or the first time you discover that you can look at an execution plan and have to muddle through "estimated cost", "hash join", "table scan", et al?
Books Online is great, if you already have a good grounding in the basics and know pretty much where you want to go. If someone can tell you, "search for this" and give you the right keywords, it can be very useful. But "RTFM" just doesn't cut it in SQL if you ask me. Been there, tried that, took years to get comfortable with it.
But this particular incident? Wow!!!! The error message is kind enough to give you the exact handling! It doesn't get better than that. You don't have to look it up. You don't have to guess keywords, you don't have to throw an error code into Google search and hope the results are in English. You just have it. But I guess that wasn't good enough in this case. Not sure why. Definitely seems to belong on this thread.
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
Property of The Thread
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon
February 17, 2009 at 3:51 pm
I think a lot of this is a 'learning styles' issue. I love to read manuals, but I'm a visual learner. If I see it, I can usually understand it. My wife is an auditory learner. She read very little during college but recorded every lecture and listened to them multiple times. My daughter has to 'do it' to learn it. It's all about the physical for her.
My supposition has always been that people who get into the general field of information acquisition, processing, and retrieval were primarily visual learners, because most of the successful folk I know in this industry shared my love of the printed word. As more people use the interactive media available now, I wonder if us old fogeys who like to read manuals are really a dying breed. I worry about the folks who will only know what they've actively searched for with Google, or the folklore they have heard from coworkers. Those folks, I fear, will lack a fundamental understanding of the underlying principles used in the systems they maintain and develop. With such a cookbook approach to the job, we'll end up with a lot of cooks, but no Chefs.
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