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Editorial control on columnists

  • October 26, 2007 at 3:46 pm

    #183160

    Once again, Joe Celko insults nearly the entire database community in a recent column. I ask that the editor not post articles that are designed to offend. Yes, Celko is a smart guy, but that's no reason to abuse.

    Here's the quote:

    "[identity or auto-increment columns] are handy for lazy, non-RDBMS programmers who do not want to research or think!"

    He even abuses newbies who ask beginner questions in the fora!

  • October 26, 2007 at 5:27 pm

    #745940

    Heh... the only thing I might disagee with is you calling Celko "smart" 😉

    --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)

  • October 26, 2007 at 9:47 pm

    #745955

    besides which, celko is provably wrong.

    identity fields often make the very best candidates for primary keys in terms of performance. and they certainly don't taint the natural design of the table. i don't think anyone would suggest an identity field for pk and not uniqueify the natural key with a constraint or unique index.

    he even asks "Why are you worried about the overhead of a string comparison on modern hardware?" perhaps he has never heard of a little thing called I/O. or memory. or CPU Pressure.

    my hardware (and it is very high end) runs more than one or two queries a day so of course i'm worried about performance. and the difference is dramatic between a 4 byte key and say, an email address as he suggests, which is going to be somewhere around 32 bytes.

    just ridiculous.

  • October 30, 2007 at 7:53 am

    #746644

    I can appreciate your ire at Mr. Celko, but I'd argue he has helped advance our profession and comes up with some interesting solutions to problems using SQL.

    I think that some of his writings and links are relevant and worth linking to. However we do bring some editorial decision making to deciding which to run and which aren't appropriate. I don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater because of some of his comments.

  • October 30, 2007 at 8:29 am

    #746661

    hehe...If we threw every cranky person off of here....This would be one quiet place........:w00t:

    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part...unless you're my manager...or a director and above...or a really loud-spoken end-user..All right - what was my emergency again?

  • October 30, 2007 at 9:17 am

    #746689

    Steve Jones - Editor (10/30/2007)

    I can appreciate your ire at Mr. Celko, but I'd argue he has helped advance our profession and comes up with some interesting solutions to problems using SQL...

    Oh, I agree, but as editor, you can send it back to him and tell him you won't print language that's offensive. I'm sure he doesn't think much of editors (I refer here to the many confusing typos in his smarties book), but he'll live.

  • October 30, 2007 at 11:51 am

    #746793

    I have been in contact before with him. It sometimes works, sometimes doesn't.

    We do keep an eye out and please use the "Report" button if you see something here that's a problem.

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