Please include your DDL

I haven’t done it much the past few years, but I would answer some programming questions posted in forums back in the day. In the late 90s, I answered Visual Basic questions and eventually switched to SQL Server questions here on SQL Server Central as my career progressed. Answering questions not only assisted someone else, but it also helped me learn as well.

Now, because I’m learning more about MySQL, I’m trying to answer a MySQL question every day on Stack Overflow. Like many tech professionals, I frequently find answers to my own questions on the site, but this is the first time I’ve tried answering any.

In my case, I’m seeing syntax in the MySQL code that looks unfamiliar to my brain that's so used to T-SQL. For example, I would write and call a proc selecting the rows from a table called Airplanes like this:

CREATE PROC usp_getPlanes AS
    SELECT ID, Name, Description
    FROM airplanes;
GO
EXEC dbo.usp_getPlanes;

The same procedure in MySQL looks like this:

DELIMITER //
CREATE PROCEDURE getPlanes() 
BEGIN 
    SELECT ID, Name, Description 
    FROM airplanes; 
END//
DELIMITER ;
CALL getPlanes();

As I run across these differences, I can learn more about MySQL syntax and possibly answer the questions. I might also get some ideas for Simple Talk or SQL Server Central articles.

Spending some time looking at MySQL questions on Stack Overflow seems useful but has been somewhat frustrating. The questions are grabbed up quickly, probably due to the vast audience on the site, but I wonder if some folks watch for new questions several hours each day to gain reputation points. It’s very competitive.

Many rude comments are not helpful at all. Instead, they are “this question was answered by another post” or “read the manual.” I like to give the poster the benefit of the doubt and assume that they did try searching for their answer and couldn’t find it. Sometimes the linked post that is supposed to have the solution doesn't.

The biggest problem with answering query questions is that it is rare to see the DDL and DML statements given, but I don't think that's limited to Stack Overflow. Some questions will show some sample data and maybe what the data returned is supposed to look like and a query they’ve already tried but didn’t work. That means spending several minutes writing out CREATE TABLE and INSERT statements while, in the meantime, someone else will probably post the answer. If you are posting questions like this, please provide some DDL and DML code!!!

I realize that I don’t understand Stack Overflow’s nuances at this point, but I’ve seen some strange behavior. After posting the correct query to a question, I’ve noticed that the question often gets deleted within a few seconds. Are the posters too embarrassed to leave the question alone once it’s answered?

I enjoy solving SQL puzzles, but please, post your DDL and DML code and leave your question up so I can get those reputation points!

Kathi Kellenberger

Join the debate, and respond to the editorial on the forums

Find out how 2500+ of your database professional peers are meeting current and upcoming challenges in our free reports. We cover the Cloud, Security, Growing Environments and the value of monitoring for the entire organization.

This article describes a route to adopting Flyway in order to bring management and control to a chaotic database development process. It is based on use of Flyway migrations to update a database from version to version, while maintaining object-level source scripts for tracking changes between versions.

In this article we take a look at the Azure AI Lan...

In this post I'm going to demonstrate one of the i...

A while ago I presented a session which covered tr...

Learn how to manage SQL Server space used by individual tables with this tutorial. Read more here. The post Space used by Individual tables in SQL Server appeared first on...

Execute the sys.dm_exec_requests DMV in SQL Server Management Studio to get the status of the backup or restore operations. The post SQL Server Dynamic Management View(DMV)- sys.dm_exec_requests appeared first on...

Introduction These are my SQL Server Diagnostic Information Queries for February 2022, aka my DMV Diagnostic Queries. They allow you to get a very comprehensive view of the configuration...

(This post was co-authored by Erik Darling.) The more things stay the same, the more they change… No, that’s not a mistake. In fact, it’s a reference to long-held...

If you have a SQL Server you must have a backup and restore plan. If you don’t you’re in for a rude awakening for sure. Backups are absolutely essential...

Usually, Data Exposed goes live at 9AM PT on Learn...

Manage your SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machine st...

In this article we do performance comparisons of running Azure SQL Edge using Intel Mac versus M1 Mac to see what kinds of differences there are in performance.

This article explores the scalar UDF performance issues and improvements in Azure SQL Database using UDF Inlining. Introduction SQL Server 2017 and 2019 include intelligent query processing (IQP) features...

In this blog post we shall consider some of the st...

Log Analytics uses KQL – Kusto Query Language ...

This is part of a series on my preparation for the...

SQLBits, the largest Microsoft Data Platform confe...

More and more organizations are turning to DevOps as a way of working together to improve the efficiency and quality of software delivery, and increase value to the business. But what exactly is DevOps and what does it mean for you and your organization?

It has been a while since my last Friday Fun post....

So far we’ve covered a lot in this ...

Every modern business professional understands the...

A common software development practice is to take data from a production system and restore it to a different environment, often called “test”, “development”, “staging”, or even “QA”. This...

Data Science is a diverse field with an array of c...

It’s important to choose the right datatypes whe...

You are developing a SQL Server application and at...

Learn about the differences in SQL Server, Oracle ...

In this tip we cover the pros and cons to using a ...

Kent Bradshaw and I have been working together on ...

Several DAX table functions can be used for pagina...

ISLOGICAL: Checks whether a value is a logical val...

This is part one in a series on getting beyond the basics with Azure ML. In the prior series, Low-Code Machine Learning with Azure ML, we saw how to...

Enough of the theory and text lets use the Azure P...

Azure Backup and Azure Database Services bring to ...

In this article, we will go through the details of...

Microsoft Power BI and Tableau are two of the top ...

The new sparklines feature in Power BI retrieves m...

Reading Time: 3 minutes Last week I presented usi...

Well, it’s a new year and a new start, even if I am a bit behind the start of the ... Continue reading

In this article we present complex built-in data t...

Generating violin boxplots from image. Yes, why not. We create a raster image from a picture and calculating the ratio of the pixels on the scale of grayscale....

Today, we announce the release of the latest cumul...

This is a T-SQL script that I’m cross-publishing with the official Madeira Data Solutions blog. This script generates various permutations and variations of common and weak passwords and uses...

Have you ever had to find the number of rows in a ...

In this article, we will explore the details of wh...

Reusable Logic In most programming languages, it’s quite sensible to create a variable or parameter, use some predefined logic to assign it a value, and then keep reusing it to...

A lot of times, you’re asked to find where two different tables have the same data. Thankfully, this is a fairly normal ask. Sometimes, though, you’re asked to see...

This article describes the use of T-SQL code for artificial intelligence models that recommend when to buy and sell financial securities.