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RE: Knowledge sharing

Ronald Cartmale — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 10:25:38 GMT

I totally agree with Manie Verster and his article Knowledge Sharing. I have found sites like SQL ServerCentral invaluable and have scoured the many articles that have been posted here and at other sites.I started programming in SQL some ten years ago and when I joined my current company I made the assumption that the developers all knew more far more than myself, but I soon realised from the headless chicken routines and sleepless nights that in fact they knew nothing apart from SELECT * etc.Of course, a little knowledge is dangerous and buzz words would creep into our daily lives like indexes, triggers and colleagues started to use these in the belief that they were doing it right. It was only after one disastrous deployment that never got off the ground and the subsequent witch hunt to find the cause of the failure, that I was galvanised into really getting to grips with the SQL innards. I was fed up with having little knowledge, the long hours and sleepless nights and through various forums I was soon able to trace the cause of many SQL / Server problems and to start advising colleagues on best SQL polices.I spent hours trawling through help forums which I found many many times more helpful than the MSDN help pages which say a lot but tell you nothing, and which if you are not careful can be lead you a merry dance following link after link until you get so lost you give up.Like Manie, I am a slow learner when it comes to written text, but I learn quickly from diagrams and worked examples something MSDN really lacks, but once I have learnt it is there to stay.Long live the forums and a big thank you to all who have contributed over the years.

RE: Knowledge sharing

Tim Mitchell — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 14:43:41 GMT

Good article, and well articulated. On behalf of those of us who have been around a while, thanks for the kind words.I'm sure that most if not all of us veterans could tell stories about the SQL server community, and this site in particular, as being a big help to us over the years. I found SSC after inheriting a single SQL Server installation and as I accumulated more of these instances to manage, I was able to call on this group for polite and professional advice many times. I've learned a thing or two since, and try to answer as many questions as I can - though I often stand in awe at many of the other experts here.Not that I'm bashing other forums or other database technologies, but SSC has always seemed like a cut above other forum sites. I've participated in other SQL Server forums where many of the veterans put themselves on a pedistal, and will respond unprofessionally toward those who are inexperienced but willing to learn. And good luck finding helpful forums for some of the other database vendors. I've got a couple of Big O installations that I manage, and I've not had luck finding any forums that are anywhere nearly as useful as what we have here.

RE: Knowledge sharing

Jeff Moden — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 10:27:30 GMT

Mannie, thanks for posting the article... your points are well taken and the appearance of the article is actually very timely for me. It gave me a chance to vent a little about a recent troublesome subject as well as a reminder that we all started out the same way.

RE: Knowledge sharing

Jeff Moden — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 10:20:46 GMT

[quote][b]David Burrows (11/27/2008)[/b][hr][quote]And Jeff makes a good point too. Not enough of you guys get credit for posting knowledge...[/quote]Hear, hear. :)[quote]But I think we all owe thanks to folks like Jeff and Steve...[/quote]Ditto :D..... and don't forget ....All hail Jeff, the SQL God :w00t:[/quote]Dang, David... heh... Thanks, ol' friend!I've gotta disagree, though... if I were a "SQL god", I'd never make [i]mistrakes[/i]. :P

RE: Knowledge sharing

Jeff Moden — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 10:17:07 GMT

[quote][b]thisisfutile (11/25/2008)[/b][hr][quote][b]Jeff Moden (11/25/2008)[/b][hr]...Heh... then there's the "intelligent" ones that say things like "performance" doesn't matter and will argue for hours about it. The only reason why I continue in such a debate is because I don't want any newbies to think that performance doesn't matter....[/quote]In an effort to both edify a strong forum poster (Jeff) and to give kudos to a great forum (SSC), I'd like to quote Jeff and point everyone's attention to a post he just made (< 24hours ago...I think). It's toward the bottom, me quoting Jeff, quoting me, quoting Jeff (Post #608311). Both his professionalism and his conviction won me over to his side of the argument(http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic607292-1424-6.aspx).In short, I agree with Manie that these forums, especially for fledgling DBA's like myself (title withheld for fear of seeing a dark side of Jeff that I haven't encountered yet. ;)), are indispensable.[/quote]Wow. Thanks for the great compliment and support! Heh... yeah... I love it when two or more folks get engaged in good stong conversations with good code proofs and good examples. I've learned a huge amount from those especially if I can squeeze my way into the conversation. I love good proofs like that until someone reduces the dialog to ruble with name calling or feather fluffing like one of the folks has started doing on the very thread [b]thisisfutile[/b] mentioned... it's so very hard to suppress the "dark side", then. But, in most cases, I go back to only that which is valuable... the proof is always in the code. :D

RE: Knowledge sharing

Jeff Moden — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 09:49:45 GMT

[quote][b]G Bryant McClellan (11/25/2008)[/b][hr]Manie makes some very good points. I wish SQLServerCentral had been around in 1994 when I started working with SQL Server.And Jeff makes a good point too. Not enough of you guys get credit for posting knowledge and wisdom on your own initiative without the thought of recompense. I know I come here because of the wealth of information represented by the membership. I can always find something interesting to read, frequently an answer to a question (whether or not I knew I had the question) and I can occasionally put my 2 cents in for some value. But I think we all owe thanks to folks like Jeff and Steve and all the other experienced people who post information for the rest of us to make use of. Thanks, guys. You don't hear it often enough, but I believe you help more than you know. Just look at the number of members. That says something by itself.[/quote]Well thanks Bryant. :blush: I really appreciate that. I do it because I just like to see people's "lights" turn on. When I get a hearty "thanks", it makes my day.Hmmmm... random thought... I wonder how many school teachers get that kind of thanks. They teach to see people's "lights" turn on, too, and they probably get it less than anyone on a forum.

RE: Knowledge sharing

Mohit K. Gupta — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 07:04:09 GMT

[quote][b]Manie Verster (11/27/2008)[/b][hr]To the professionals I want to say: "If you want to allow them to do it to you then it's your own fault. However, don't let somebody suffocate in their own blood. Sometimes they just need that extra little push to get going". I had a teacher that one day told me: "When you're an adult, never forget that you were also a child once." Let us not forget that we were newbies once.[/quote]Both good points, and in those cases I encourage people to come talk to me. I like it when people do their research and come talk to me about what they found. I think it shows that a) they are willing to learn b) they dont' mind asking for help. I don't even have problem with someone coming to ask for guidelines on where he should be looking, I like to say "I'll show you the path to the door bud, but you got to walk through it". What I was saying my eailer post was the type I don't like is do my work for me, because I am too busy to figure something new out. Or the other extreem (which is what I run into), I did my research I know what I am doing (enough to be dangerous), I'll just request a change like that. So when I tell them no, with my reasoning, most people are not happy. Thats all, and I agree with your comments 100% Specially the "When you're ...", when I am in my Kendo (Japanese Martial art) I have to tell myself that all the time. Because some things come to me easier then they do other in class, but I been doing it for seven years :P.Thanks Manie :).

RE: Knowledge sharing

David Burrows — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 06:55:07 GMT

[quote]And Jeff makes a good point too. Not enough of you guys get credit for posting knowledge...[/quote]Hear, hear. :)[quote]But I think we all owe thanks to folks like Jeff and Steve...[/quote]Ditto :D..... and don't forget ....All hail Jeff, the SQL God :w00t:

RE: Knowledge sharing

Manie Verster — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 03:39:26 GMT

Look, don't get me wrong here. I absolutely believe in learning the hard way because that is the things you will remember most. You look for help in BOL and you read up about a certain subject you are battling with but in the end it's just that critical point you are missing that you cannot find in the documentation. This is where a forum like SCC comes in. To all the newbies and rookies I'd like to say: "Read it up. Don't expect people to hold your hand because then you are not going to learn a thing".To the professionals I want to say: "If you want to allow them to do it to you then it's your own fault. However, don't let somebody suffocate in their own blood. Sometimes they just need that extra little push to get going". I had a teacher that one day told me: "When you're an adult, never forget that you were also a child once." Let us not forget that we were newbies once.:):):):):):):):):):):):):):):)

RE: Knowledge sharing

Mohit K. Gupta — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 15:10:41 GMT

I agree with Rob. I also find there is general lack of feedback from the people you help, I get lots of feed back here ;). But I have on other newsgroups, where you provide the solution and then you don’t hear back from the person if it helped or not for days on end. I have helped people with SQL Questions, queries, and I always tell them in BOL if you go here and here you get the answer. What happens week later same person question again, they don't like to investigate it. So I end up helping them again, if I don't help them then I get labeled as "not being cooperative". So I end up taking the people through step-by-step on how to do something they should know how to do.What makes it worse is when I see email later on from them to (upper management or clients) stating how issues were resolved by them. No recognition for your efforts or such, but if you didn’t help or didn’t step the person through the issues then it makes it up the chain and becomes entirely my fault.I am very new to SQL DBA role, comparing to everyone here :blush:. About four years, but I always dig into BOL, news groups, Google to get the answer. To that end I also started blog’ing to keep it straight in my brain on how to do stuff in SQL or new things I learn. And keep the links to all Articles, posts by other people that show how to do stuff better then what I have seen or known. So thanks again :)

RE: Knowledge sharing

Preet_S — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 14:03:39 GMT

Good points.I share your frustration when we seem to have to hunt endlessly for a post by somebody who has managed to resolve a problem that you now face. Far too often the answer is found elsewhere (not on MS's website). Sometimes there are problems that we cannot resolve no matter how many things we try and ultimately can only be resolved by those who have access to the source code. BOL is a treasure trove of information but I do sometimes find MS's documentation and proactiveness in helping to resolve common issues, somewhat wanting.

RE: Knowledge sharing

Lynn Pettis — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 12:51:06 GMT

I served 4 years in the Country Club (aka USAF) as a computer operator, even graduated as an Honor Grad from tech school. It didn't truely prepare me for my first duty station, even though it did help me as I was qualified by my supervisor to work by my self after only 2 months when normal training time at a new duty site is 6 months.This is what bugs people, I tell everyone that the first thing my supervisor did was to teach me to read. When ever we had a problem and I came to him, first thing he asked was "What does the manual say?". Then he started teaching me tricks of the trade that made me even better. He even taught me how to run our computer system without the SPO (Supervisory Printer Online - Burroughs B3500). Ours broke one night on second shift (the busiest for batch processing) and after calling the FE, he said we could sit and wait, or I could learn something. We ran that computer system for 3 hours using the card punch machine, the card reader, and the line printer. Shocked the FE when he came in to work on the SPO.Sharing knowledge is great, but you have have to want to learn. Same thing happened shortly before I left England. The people I was working with at the time then, all they did was move the card punch in the computer room for me. The didn't care to learn how to keep things running.

RE: Knowledge sharing

Steve Jones - SSC Editor — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 12:45:23 GMT

Robert,I agree and I'm always happy to see people posting hints rather than complete solutions. Especially when people haven't made any attempt at it themselves.

RE: Knowledge sharing

Robert Hermsen — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 12:35:38 GMT

I am all about sharing knowledge and bettering others. HOWEVER! I am also extremely insulted when someone asks me to teach them how to do everything in a cliff's notes version. Why? It is INSULTING! We have spent many years learning and perfecting what we do. If there was the ability to provide an adequate Cliffs Notes version we wouldn't need to have DBA's. We recently rolled out a new SQL Server based product and our training group wants to give our installers enough knowledge to function with SQL. I like that. I don't like that they want me to summarize EVERYTHING i do into a 2 hour session because the Installer WILL NEED it. Give them enough to install the product and do the initial troubleshooting. There is a reason we have a support staff of DBAs at their beconned call.The best thing my mentor did for me when i started was say 'Figure it out'. Seldom are all problems identical. If you take if then else approach at SQL Server troubleshooting you will limit yourself. You must treat each situation as a new dynamic living issue. I like the post earlier along the same lines. I also follow the Figure it Out yourself then we can discuss before you implement. It is a great teaching\learning process and yet safeguards the new person from failure.

RE: Knowledge sharing

Stephen.Richardson — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 14:21:07 GMT

I agree with the consensus above that I love to help others, for very selfish reasons, I expand my knowledge, but it is a drag when people ask to do their work for them as a freebee.Is there a site of useful utilities/solutions that can be leveraged for ideas. One that posed a bad problem for us was solved with a SSIS package to rebuild SQL index across all server Databases on a daily basis only between 7-9PM and then would have to stop itself only between indexes never in the middle :w00t:. It had to select tables that were larger than a specific size, then depending upon the table size defrag when the level of fragmentation varied from 10-85% so that the same index was not rebuilt every night, determine whether to reorganize/rebuild the indexes, and finally log it so that I can track frequency for fine tuning. It maintains tables from 34M-50K rows across 8 databases and very rarely has to stop due to time/server load. Last time tweaked was over a month ago.

RE: Knowledge sharing

YSLGuru — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 13:41:46 GMT

Steve I don't know if this is an option/possible for this website but I did see something on a other site recently that provides the awarding of points when a question post in answered and the points vary based on well the original poster felt the answer was. I'm sure it's not perfect but it's a way of giving some level of recognition to those who reply a lot and reply with useful info and not just simply a reply.Not sure what kind of promos if any you can get with Red-Gate but it might be nice if there was something like a Rewards System in place that would allow someone like Jeff (who replies A LOT) to get something for that effort like a free copy of some Red-Gate software or promotional product (perhaps even from another vendor) like a shirt.Just a thought.

RE: Knowledge sharing

GSquared — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 11:59:26 GMT

Good article, good discussion.I always try to have as much patience as possible with questions on these forums. I have to agree with Jeff that obvious interview/test questions have to be handled differently than "real" questions, but I try to err on the side of answering where I shouldn't rather than not answering where I should.I don't really have a problem with arrogant questions. My biggest problem in forums like this is when something in the question isn't clear, and I ask for clarification, and either never get an answer, or get something that doesn't actually clarify anything at all. I understand that some/many people posting here don't speak English as their primary language (nor SQL as their second language), but there have been a few times where I've had to give up on a thread because I simply couldn't get some critical clarification of what was being asked for.Where I have a BIG problem is, however, none of the things that have been mentioned yet. It's when someone comes here, asks for help in performance tuning a complex stored procedure, gets an answer, and immediately follows that up with a dozen more of a similar nature, all requiring hours of work to get fixed up. It doesn't happen often, but it has happened a few times. There's a big difference between going to a forum for help, learning something, and moving on with it, and going to a forum for free work on complex projects.Outside of that, I love this forum (and related sites). I've been away from it for a couple of months, because of mad-crazy workload, but I'm back as much as I can be.If I'd known such sites existed while I was learning SQL, I would have had a much easier time of it on a number of the projects I took on!So I try to help as much as I can, while I learn as much as I can. Half the time, answering someone's question teaches me new things about subjects I would never have thought of, but which are definitely useful!So, yeah, good article on a good subject. Keep the forums rollin'!

RE: Knowledge sharing

Stephen.Richardson — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 11:50:54 GMT

Appreciate the article greatly. I have been working with SQL for a while and have built some nice tools for routine task, but have never been able to share them, or it is tedious to look for solutions others have already found to similar situations.

RE: Knowledge sharing

Dcarlson — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 10:01:29 GMT

Great post, Manie! This is a timely topic and I appreciate it. There will always be shallow people that are quick to expose their ignorance with arrogant attitudes or derogatory remarks. The Bible says that even a fool will be thought intelligent if he keeps silent.I appreciate the wisdom dispensed by the many excellent posters on this forum. It is because of their selfless efforts that I am able learn what I need to do my job without making disastrous mistakes. I will not name them here as there is no way I could mention them all and I do not want to leave any out.In short, when it comes to posting or responding to posts, I think of what the famous cowboy philosopher, Will Rogers, once said: "The problem ain't what we know, but what we know that just ain't so!"Cheers

RE: Knowledge sharing

Anipaul — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 09:04:01 GMT

Manie Excellent one. Wish you write lot of articles here ...:)

RE: Knowledge sharing

Steve Jones - SSC Editor — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 08:54:24 GMT

Manie,Great article and thanks to everyone else for the great complements. We try to help where we can.

RE: Knowledge sharing

Carla Wilson-484785 — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 07:48:12 GMT

[quote][b]Lynn Pettis (11/25/2008)[/b][hr]This is an awesome site with many great people willing to share thier knowledge. I know I have picked up many new ideas here, and learned some tricks to get things done faster and more effeciently.Kudos to Steve for a great site, and to the "heavy hitters" (Jeff, Gail, Grant, Jack, and many others) that have taught me a lot in a short period of time. Keep it up, because you have inspired me as well, which is why I have tried to help as many as I can as well.Manie, good article, and welcome to the team![/quote]I share Lynn's sentiments exactly. I have learned so much from the forum discussions. I am now addicted to the newsletter and the forums. The newsletter is the first thing I read in the morning. It really starts the day off right - gets my brain warmed up and ready for work.

RE: Knowledge sharing

Lynn Pettis — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 07:40:42 GMT

This is an awesome site with many great people willing to share thier knowledge. I know I have picked up many new ideas here, and learned some tricks to get things done faster and more effeciently.Kudos to Steve for a great site, and to the "heavy hitters" (Jeff, Gail, Grant, Jack, and many others) that have taught me a lot in a short period of time. Keep it up, because you have inspired me as well, which is why I have tried to help as many as I can as well.Manie, good article, and welcome to the team!

RE: Knowledge sharing

thisisfutile — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 07:26:09 GMT

[quote][b]Jeff Moden (11/25/2008)[/b][hr]...Heh... then there's the "intelligent" ones that say things like "performance" doesn't matter and will argue for hours about it. The only reason why I continue in such a debate is because I don't want any newbies to think that performance doesn't matter....[/quote]In an effort to both edify a strong forum poster (Jeff) and to give kudos to a great forum (SSC), I'd like to quote Jeff and point everyone's attention to a post he just made (< 24hours ago...I think). It's toward the bottom, me quoting Jeff, quoting me, quoting Jeff (Post #608311). Both his professionalism and his conviction won me over to his side of the argument(http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic607292-1424-6.aspx).In short, I agree with Manie that these forums, especially for fledgling DBA's like myself (title withheld for fear of seeing a dark side of Jeff that I haven't encountered yet. ;)), are indispensable.

RE: Knowledge sharing

Mohit K. Gupta — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 07:00:12 GMT

When it comes to the Maintenance tasks for deleting old files, I found another annoying fact about them. I am not sure if anyone else has run into this, the process (or rather extended stored procedure) that deletes the files is case sensitive :ermm:. I didn't check the collation on the Server at that time; I plan to do that when I get to work today LOL.But on that server I had backups building up non stop, until I found out that the I had different case in the extension. i.e. "bak" vs. "BAK". This form, Microsoft News Groups, Many many Bloggs (Blog hunter :p). When I start studying SQL Server; I was very disappointed at what I was doing and what was expected of me as SQL Server DBA. So I started studying on my on times, books, news groups, etc. Read peoples question try to come with an answer; if I was able to I did post the reply. But many times I have found other people reply and learn great deal from it. As one of my teachers once told me in Kendo, take all the comments you get, you never know when one of them might be useful to you :). Great article :).Edit: I been watching and reading articles on this site for a while now; but recently decided to start posting and start asking questions. As with many I have had some not so good experiences with the forms. When I wrote my first article on SSC regarding Normalization; and got peoples response it was really a good feeling. Many people came with great reply and suggestion (which I am working on 2nd part of that article on). But recently I wrote on SCHEMABINDDING for my on blog (http://sqllearnings.blogspot.com/2008/11/schema-binding-views.html) for a friend who didn't know what it meant and again I am always surprised at the time people are willing to put in me. I like to thank all the people who have helped me here and everywhere else, on an endless journey to become a good DBA :D.

RE: Knowledge sharing

Jeff Moden — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 06:52:34 GMT

[quote][b]Manie Verster (11/25/2008)[/b][hr]I was talking about rookies/newbies that are really struggling to do it and in the workplace you don't get a lot of people that wants to help and they find pleasure in seeing someone suffering and eventually even get fired because they don't come right.[/quote]Understood... even said that folks like me cater to newbies... so long as they don't have a chip on their shoulder. I don't believe you'll find any of the heavy hitters on this forum want to see someone fail just because they're new and they certainly don't find pleasure in seeing someone suffer or get fired. Part of the reason why I take my personal time to post is because I didn't have anyone to ask when I started and the internet was nothing but a hard coded dirt road.In the office, I'm happy to help someone who wants to learn. I've taught 5 or 6 lunch'n'learns in the few months I've been at the new job and I have absolutely no problem showing someone how to do something. But if you come up to me and ask me for help with an arrogant attitude, you probably aren't going to get my help even if it's on how to just make coffee.We all have to work together and business is tough enough without putting up with arrogance or bad attitude from anyone and that covers even more than just getting some help.

RE: Knowledge sharing

G Bryant McClellan — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 06:41:16 GMT

Manie makes some very good points. I wish SQLServerCentral had been around in 1994 when I started working with SQL Server.And Jeff makes a good point too. Not enough of you guys get credit for posting knowledge and wisdom on your own initiative without the thought of recompense. I know I come here because of the wealth of information represented by the membership. I can always find something interesting to read, frequently an answer to a question (whether or not I knew I had the question) and I can occasionally put my 2 cents in for some value. But I think we all owe thanks to folks like Jeff and Steve and all the other experienced people who post information for the rest of us to make use of. Thanks, guys. You don't hear it often enough, but I believe you help more than you know. Just look at the number of members. That says something by itself.

RE: Knowledge sharing

Ronald C Hagerman — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 06:15:46 GMT

I spent three days building a simple two node cluster using a lab server with VMWare Server installed.Not as easy as it sounds given that I'm not a server administrator by trade (Systems Integrator)I Had to figure out how to create a cluster, had to figure out how to get VMWare Server to allow me to share a drive, and had to figure out how to share resources. I could have just called an Exchange administrator, those guys do this all the time with the Exchange servers, though they don't do it with virtual servers, but I chose to use my favorite method of learning, Google.In the end, I had a two node virtual cluster with a file share and website that had full failover capabilities.The lesson I learned was then documented and posted to my company blog. If anyone asks, I'll just send them a link to the article.The one that will really bother me is the one guy at work (there is one guy who...) who will call me two hours after I leave the office to discuss his shortcomings as a VB scripter. (Hey, I'm trying to...)Since I'm on call for a product I manage, I'll answer the phone and politely and patiently explain it to him AGAIN. I won't charge the company for the time because I'm salaried and I'll secretly wish this guy would just fall victim to the next round of labor reductions.I digress though, good article.Regards,Ron Hagerman

RE: Knowledge sharing

Lorenzo DBA — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 06:00:57 GMT

I Thank you Manie for posting something like this. It did experience exactly the same thing as I was learning SQL. As there are demanding request from other more senior folks, there are also arrogant office mates that would not help. Until someone new came along that knew a lot of things that we helped each other out did I start to learn. I however want to point out that if a new person comes into this line of work, for them to takethe initiative to read, research and practice. Most DBA's starting out almost use the Sr. ones asa crutch and never want to give it some effort before asking the questions.When my Jr. DBA's ask me a question, I tell them to look it up first and then we can discuss if they still have any questions. I provide them with a DBA Test environment of which they can practice and learn before they mess with production servers and databases.

RE: Knowledge sharing

D.Oc — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 04:27:19 GMT

Good article Manie,SSC is gr8 forum with some good ppl who are really trying to help everyone.As I like MS products (I'm MCITP Dev and DBA and soon be a MCSE) I also like to work in oracle and linux and I remembered how I was burned on one linux forum, I asked something about intrusion detection, penetration testing and exploits (preparing myself for CEH exam) and as an answer I got only RTFMs :blush: I've never got back to that forum ever again.Politeness of members is essential for a gr8 forum and community.

RE: Knowledge sharing

Tom Brown — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 03:34:47 GMT

Good article Manie.This forum was my first experience of online forums and I am grateful for the help I get. Because of the positive experience here I've joined forums for my other interests too and it really broadens my outlook to hear other peoples views.

RE: Knowledge sharing

Manie Verster — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 03:17:56 GMT

Erratum:The following piece if code is incomplete and I have placed the correct code below this:[code]declare @datestring varchar(12)set @datestring = convert(varchar(12),dateadd(d,-3,getdate()),1)EXECUTE master.dbo.xp_delete_file [/code]The correct code:[code]declare @datestring varchar(12)set @datestring = convert(varchar(12),dateadd(d,-3,getdate()),1)EXECUTE master.dbo.xp_delete_file 0, N'D:\Orisys\Backup\',N'bak', @datestring[/code]Now Jeff, I'd like to thank you for your post. You know what? I knew you were going to be the first to comment because I remember from a while back something that you said about this same subject. You are right in a way because I also don't like arrogant people but I was not talking about them. I was talking about rookies/newbies that are really struggling to do it and in the workplace you don't get a lot of people that wants to help and they find pleasure in seeing someone suffering and eventually even get fired because they don't come right.If you just know how I struggled in the beginning and how these forums helped me. I am willing to share my little bit of knowledge with anyone.Hey remember! Jesus loves you.

RE: Knowledge sharing

Jeff Moden — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:05:53 GMT

I don't have a problem either helping rookies or being patient with them. I do have a problem with people that have a gazillion titles after their name and they "ask" things like "how to backup send answer with detailed steps immediately". Those kinds of "questions" don't sit well with me or a lot of other people who won't speak up about it, especially since the "answer" is in bloody Books Online and they never even looked! Questions like that are arrogant and stupid especially when they "brag" about how much they think they know by calling themselves Sr. DBA or have a bunch of titles after their name.Everyone wants folks like me to be patient and, lordy, we try. But we also put up with a huge amount of abuse, arrogant demands, and a whole bunch of other hooie including some of the most poorly formed questions and data descriptions in the world. Even when we ask for clarification, it almost seems that some people are bothered by the fact we asked for clarification.Your article is well founded, Manie... I wish people would take the time to be kind to us frequent posters and to remember we don't get paid to take as much crap as we do...Some of my favorites are lists of interview questions and homework questions... and they're usually in some forum post with "urgent" in the title. People actually expect us to do their bloody homework for them. The world is full of people with titles that don't deserve them... I'm not gonna help someone else get that way. Why don't I just ignore the post? Because there's a lot of people out there that don't understand that people doing homework have to try and that I don't want folks just to give these future bad DBA's the answers. Same thing with the interview questions. Heh... then there's the "intelligent" ones that say things like "performance" doesn't matter and will argue for hours about it. The only reason why I continue in such a debate is because I don't want any newbies to think that performance doesn't matter. With very, very few exceptions, it almost always matters because someone will pick up on bad code and use it.I wish someone would write and article about how to post a question... oh, wait a minute! I DID! ;) And it's in my signature line and in the signature line of many of the heavy hitters. Do you think people take the time to read it even when we do point it out? Some do but most don't... So yes... if you have intelligent questions, even if you're not sure exactly what to ask and you use just a little non-arrogant courtesy in a post, people will jump through hoops to help you. Take on the wrong attitude and it's pork chop time, boys and girls. :hehe:

Knowledge sharing

Manie Verster — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 21:42:51 GMT

Comments posted to this topic are about the item [B]Knowledge sharing[/B]