September 1, 2009 at 7:43 am
Like forgetting a WHERE clause on a DELETE statement.
Been there, done that. Thank goodness it was a relatively small table, and I had a backup. But the nauseating feeling just after I did it was really bad.
I do agree in giving someone the benefit of the doubt. And certainly there are times when the "help" offered is really a thinly disguised insult to the "helpee's" intelligence, that is, how stupid are you for thinking that would work. I have seen only one or two cases of that here on SSC, though. The vast majority of members are extremely helpful and cordial.
But assuming the helper has given a good faith, cordial answer, then the responsibility shifts to the person asking for help to show whether or not they did (or still want to do) something not recommended. If the attitude of the person asking for help is ungracious or rude (i.e., demanding help, being obnoxious when given a reason why the idea is wrong, etc.), then I kind of think all bets are off, and the helpers (within forum guidelines) are free to respond however they think necessary to defend their honor.
I know that if I were in the position of offering help I would not want to be treated as if I have to take whatever the "helpee" is dishing out. Ultimately, as a "helpee" I would want to get the best answer possible for my problem, and that usually involves listening in a humble manner to those who know more. Even if the helper is being obnoxious, I would try to avoid that line of confrontation and try to stick to the problem at hand - the "helpee" loses either way: (1) they win the point but stoop to being obnoxious too, or (2) they lose the point and get further embarrassed.
- webrunner
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A SQL query walks into a bar and sees two tables. He walks up to them and asks, "Can I join you?"
Ref.: http://tkyte.blogspot.com/2009/02/sql-joke.html
September 1, 2009 at 7:44 am
Words of wisdom Steve.
A couple thoughts I had on why things are done in certain ways.
1. Often people are asked to do tasks that they may not have a lot of experience handling so they may take a less expensive/time consuming path to accomplish the task. This isn't necessarily "stupid"...we are all trying to get a job done with the skills we have at hand, save the company a little money and move on to the next set of tasks.
2. Before you ask questions or criticize somebody on their choice of tactics to perform a task, it is often a good idea to get their perspective. As the saying goes, never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in their shoes. If they are no longer around, just keep your mouth shut and make whatever changes are needed with a smile on your face. At least you're still employed.
3. Most people I've been around love to learn new ways to perform their tasks. Purhaps the reason they took a particular (potentially unwise) approach is they just don't know any better. Criticizing them serves no constructive purpose. Instead, teach them alternative approaches, teach them why one approach is better than another, teach them how to research alternative approaches.
I'm sure there is a lot more that can be added to this list...these are just some that immediately popped in my head.
September 1, 2009 at 7:57 am
Martin,
nice summary. Thanks
September 1, 2009 at 8:27 am
Mike Stuart (9/1/2009)
Back to the original statement of "... you shouldn't have installed all that for an evaluation edition" - why not? Isn't that why we have evaluation editions: to see if they work, or not, with various components? Yeah, I know that this isn't necessarily the direction this blog is going, but it makes sense to me to install evaluation editions of not only SQL Server but 3rd party vendor / in-house developer software and see how it plays out against the existing parts and pieces of the environment.
I agree with you 100%! If you really want to see if you want to use a product; why not put the software through its paces. Even if you were using as a test environment; you would probably like to see that test environment function exactly the same on a licensed version of the same software.
September 1, 2009 at 8:43 am
Martin Vrieze (9/1/2009)
Words of wisdom Steve.A couple thoughts I had on why things are done in certain ways. ...
2. Before you ask questions or criticize somebody on their choice of tactics to perform a task, it is often a good idea to get their perspective. ...
I agree with this statement, unfortunately it seems when you ask many of the OP's here on SSC they choose not to provide this information.
September 1, 2009 at 8:54 am
There are mistakes that are unforgivable by corporate standards regardless of whether they are intentional or not. For exampel where i work some of our servers are SOX audited and every DDL/DML statement run outside of an application has to have an entry in the audit log. The application that maintains the audit log requires to be activated upon each change so that it can do the tracking. God forbid for any reason you do a change and forget to turn the thing on..very possible when you are doing hundreds of changes across multiple servers. But if you do..you can get written up, once. Twice or more, you probably go home. Noone pauses to think hey this guy had so much to do he probably just missed it. I think this is just one example of the blaming and unforgiving corporate world we live in. Every mistake is some individual's fault whereas the majority mistakes really have to do with the way their system is set up, people who have too much to do and lack of team spirit and understanding.
September 1, 2009 at 9:03 am
Maybe I have thick skin or maybe I am just thick. Comments like "You shouldn't have done that." I take at face value and move on. It seems that many on this forum take this statement to be nearly the same as "Idiot! why in the world did you do that."
I doubt I could count how many times I have been told I shouldn't have done that. I never realized I was being insulted. Of course by the time I was knee deep into the problem I already realized I shouldn't have done that. So unless the comment was to enlighten me about how things went wrong and to prevent me from making the same kind of mistake again, it was just a useless comment.
But by all means we have to be respectful, and we always should be careful how we say things. My son was working late at night on his fuel system and then he used his lighter as a flashlight.... He shouldn't have done that. Fortunately no one was hurt but the car is a burnt mess at a junk yard. I didn't tell him that using the lighter was a bad idea, but I did tell him that he should slow down and think about his safety because he won't need a car if he is six feet under. He already felt like an Idiot, I didn't see the point of piling on. I guess I am saying I am going to have to be more careful about how I say things. I want to provide direction not criticism.
September 1, 2009 at 9:09 am
Another perspective to remember is that there are other people who may read a thread looking for answers.
I think for the benefit of these people, an answer that they should not use an evaluation edition as a live production server or that they should have made a backup of their database more than once in the last six months can have value.
Doesn’t mean that you have to go out of your way to make the OP feel foolish, but sometime the only people you can help are the ones that haven’t already made the mistake. Everything we do in life can have value, but sometimes its value is as example for others of what not to do.
September 1, 2009 at 9:14 am
If I can't look back on what I did a few years or even months ago and say "I should have done that this way..." then I haven't been improving myself as a developer.
My point is that the person that had the issues probably learned a great deal from it and the person that said "You shouldn't have done that" should look back through his/her own work and see how many times they could say that themselves.
Maybe they would be more helpful and less critical next time.
September 1, 2009 at 9:34 am
I agree completely - that's what eval editions are for. To make it impossible to get the full-throttle edition except through forklift upgrades is intolerable. That's why DBA's get frustrated and move to MySQL....
September 1, 2009 at 9:37 am
Why do you assume it's a stupid thing to do? What if you need to evaluate the entire package before purchasing the full version? Where does it say "This is stupid but we let you do it anyway" in the installation.
The "stupid" part is that you have to uninstall the evaluation version to install the full version at all! What's the purpose of an evaluation that makes it difficult to upgrade to full? I thought that was the purpose! It should be seamless.
IceDread (9/1/2009)
I recently installed sql server 2005 on one of my computers with win vista, I installed everything there was to install and patches etc and it of course worked great. Then a couple of years later, one month ago, I wanted to remove sql server 2005 from that computer and I did get to remove a few parts and then suddenly I could not remove sql server 2005. Some of the parts could not be found but some parts of sql server would anyway start up on restart. It just didnt work to remove them by the control panel. So that's my warning to you all, before you remove sql server, search a bit first on how that best is done, instead of like me, just starting to remove each thing listed in the control panel that I wanted removed since sql server was just not a single item in that list as you may know. It really was annoying.
September 1, 2009 at 9:53 am
Microsoft says that they do support an direct upgrade from 2005 Evaluation Edition to 2005 Enterprise Edition, but recommend uninstalling if you plan to go to Standard, Workgroup,or Developer Edition.
http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2005/en/us/trial-software.aspx
"The 180-day trial version of SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition can be upgraded to the fully licensed version of SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition without uninstalling the trial software prior to the end of the 180-day period. If upgrading to the fully licensed version of SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition, Workgroup Edition, or Developer Edition, it is recommended that you uninstall the 180-day trial version of SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition before installing the fully licensed version of the other editions. Please refer to the product documentation for information about upgrading to the fully licensed software."
September 1, 2009 at 10:43 am
I guess I can see both sides, but fall more on the frustrated consumer side. Most eval editions have some way of being unlocked or registered to become a full version. I can see that as the Eval edition is Time-limited Enterprise, that upgrading to a different edition would be difficult, but also frustrating. As a related example, someone decided to install Windows 2003 Server Web Edition at one of the places I support. The only thing that this can be upgraded to is Windows 2008 Server Web Edition - no way of switching over to a version that supports domains. (And yes, this came down to ignorance on the installer, but pain on our part because we now have a lot of files stored on it that would require us changing again and again.)
Anyway, a more helpful response would have been more appropriate here. While accurate, it borders on insensitive and possibly rude - especially if the person installing really didn't know any better before hand. I don't lump this into the same category of backup planning or hardware capacity planning, just because most people would assume you can upgrade from an Eval to a Full version.
I think the best advice I saw earlier stated that we should try to put ourselves in the poster's position when possible to understand what they're going through and trying to do. That can help smooth communication a lot.
September 1, 2009 at 10:43 am
Michael Valentine Jones (9/1/2009)
Microsoft says that they do support an direct upgrade from 2005 Evaluation Edition to 2005 Enterprise Edition, but recommend uninstalling if you plan to go to Standard, Workgroup,or Developer Edition.http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2005/en/us/trial-software.aspx
"The 180-day trial version of SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition can be upgraded to the fully licensed version of SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition without uninstalling the trial software prior to the end of the 180-day period. If upgrading to the fully licensed version of SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition, Workgroup Edition, or Developer Edition, it is recommended that you uninstall the 180-day trial version of SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition before installing the fully licensed version of the other editions. Please refer to the product documentation for information about upgrading to the fully licensed software."
Michael, which contradicts note 2 in this link:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms143393(SQL.90).aspx
so which one to believe, and explains some peoples frustration with MS documentation in the area of installs and upgrades.
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September 1, 2009 at 11:30 am
george sibbald (9/1/2009)
Michael Valentine Jones (9/1/2009)
Microsoft says that they do support an direct upgrade from 2005 Evaluation Edition to 2005 Enterprise Edition, but recommend uninstalling if you plan to go to Standard, Workgroup,or Developer Edition.http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2005/en/us/trial-software.aspx
"The 180-day trial version of SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition can be upgraded to the fully licensed version of SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition without uninstalling the trial software prior to the end of the 180-day period. If upgrading to the fully licensed version of SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition, Workgroup Edition, or Developer Edition, it is recommended that you uninstall the 180-day trial version of SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition before installing the fully licensed version of the other editions. Please refer to the product documentation for information about upgrading to the fully licensed software."
Michael, which contradicts note 2 in this link:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms143393(SQL.90).aspx
so which one to believe, and explains some peoples frustration with MS documentation in the area of installs and upgrades.
Both are actually correct the only thing left out by Microsoft is Eval being Enterprise edition installs in all operating systems while Enterprise edition licensed build will not install in XP. The reason I think there is some difference in the binaries of SQL Server 7.0 eval that is not included in the upgrade path. I would rather SQL Server 7.0 databases be moved through SSIS because Unicode support in 7.0 require reinstall, the licensed 7.0 must be serviced by Microsoft it is in your EULA evals may not be covered by any service EULA.
Some of the reasons I was opening their service packs before I signed papers to stop doing that when I became MVP.
Kind regards,
Gift Peddie
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