Forgetful Databases

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Forgetful Databases

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camassey

Posted Thursday, January 21, 2010 8:16 PM

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Comments posted to this topic are about the item Forgetful Databases

Veni Vidi Velcro
I came, I saw, I stuck around

Post #851696

WayneS

Posted Thursday, January 21, 2010 10:18 PM

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execute sp_MSforEachTable 'delete from [?]'

should take care of things nicely here.

Wayne
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server 2008

If you can't explain to another person how the code that you're copying from the internet works, then DON'T USE IT on a production system! After all, you will be the one supporting it!

Links: For better assistance in answering your questions, How to ask a question, Performance Problems, Common date/time routines,
CROSS-TABS and PIVOT tables Part 1 & Part 2, Using APPLY Part 1 & Part 2, Splitting Delimited Strings

Post #851723

SQLRNNR

Posted Thursday, January 21, 2010 10:40 PM

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WayneS (1/21/2010)

execute sp_MSforEachTable 'delete from [?]'

should take care of things nicely here.

how about truncating all tables

or
dropping all databases

Not that I would recommend running those - but to clean out data :devil:

Jason AKA CirqueDeSQLeil
I have given a name to my pain...
MCM SQL Server 2008

SQL RNNR

Posting Performance Based Questions - Gail Shaw
Posting Data Etiquette - Jeff Moden
Hidden RBAR - Jeff Moden
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Post #851735

art-679277

Posted Thursday, January 21, 2010 11:31 PM

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Interesting editorial. I think an aging process could be developed that mimiced human aging: Every so often a few random bits in the data would get flipped, adajacent characters transposed, sentences moved within a paragraph, etc. Maybe these "mutations" would be triggered by a read access. Over time vowels would change to consonants, the "context" would erode. "Every young man should try LSD" after many years might become "Ever you hang out trials." The Mr. McGoo Procedure!

Post #851759

athurgar

Posted Friday, January 22, 2010 1:09 AM

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We are getting to a time where the results (correct or incorrect) of a search engine dictate courses of action. Google and the other search engines may need to provide the ability to not display certain data. What happens if you have the same name as somebody with a criminal record, or maybe you just want to decrease your digital footprint for a bit more anonimity. Should there be a statute of limitation on the use of this data. Maybe there is a business in www.ungoogleme.com

Post #851792

Tom Juergens

Posted Friday, January 22, 2010 2:05 AM

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Perhaps there's something missing in the story, but I find it hard to believe that he was barred from entering the US because he claimed in an article that he had once taken LSD. What if someone else had made that claim about him? Don't you have to be convicted by a judge - be proven guilty? Has the presumption of guilt become good enough in the US to provoke this kind of reaction from the authorities? And for such a minor "crime", so long ago, this seems all out of proportion. Well, just one more incident in an ever-growing line-up that makes me wonder where the US is headed...

Post #851822

camassey

Posted Friday, January 22, 2010 2:53 AM

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@tom - There may well be something missing from the story, but apart from mentioning that Andrew's incident took place in 2006 and his article was published in 2001, that's pretty much all the details from the book (which is actually a very enjoyable read, btw - which I should have mentioned).

My suspicion, if there really isn't any more to the tale, is that the border guard was just a little over-zealous. But that in itself is also an unnerving example of the kind of think the book worries about.

@athurgar Speaking of decreasing digital footprints, type 'delete' into Google as an experiment, and see what the predictive search presents you with - There's probably a market for ungoogleme.com.

Veni Vidi Velcro
I came, I saw, I stuck around

Post #851854

Richard Collins-243383

Posted Friday, January 22, 2010 3:19 AM

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I really like Art's idea of an incremental data half-life setting so you can increase or decrease the speed with which
your data mutates over time. I was imagining something similar whereby time ratchets up the security level progressively
on your data until even you can't access it. But Art's is better because it opens the door and allows for red herrings and wild
goose chases to add to the fun. But the arms race between Uni of Washington and Princeton suggests that it may actually
be really difficult to make the data un-de-mutatable http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/45818

Post #851869

sknox

Posted Friday, January 22, 2010 7:44 AM

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I'm going to play the devil's advocate here and suggest that we retain EVERYTHING. Think, for example, how much easier it would be to write a biography if we had all of this information. Consider also that some serial murderers have taken decades-long breaks and then started killing again. If we'd "forgotten" their original crimes, the ability to track them down, the effectiveness of trying/punishing them, and the closure for their earlier victims, would all be compromised.

And to be frank, Andrew Feldmar surely has matured, but you can't tell me that taking LSD didn't have some effect on how he has matured -- it certainly was important enough for him to remember and mention it in 2001. It's not irrelevant: it's surely much less relevant than most things he's done recently, but so long as the memory is real to him, it's part of his makeup.

So, rather than forgetting all of this stuff, how about we come up with a relevance formula? Store the data with a datestamp and an initial relevance factor. Then a formula such as the sample below can be used to determine how to treat the data (100% being vitally relevant, 0% being simply trivia):

Ri = Initial Relevance
D = Datestamp

Ra = "aged" Relevance = Ri/f(D), where f(D) is a function to dimish relevance over time, for example, (Current Date - Datestamp +1)

Rc = "current" Relevance = Ra/(Sum of Ra for all Data)

(I'm not suggesting this formula is ideal, it's simply one example. Many different formulas may be necessary for different pieces of data.)

Then we don't forget things, but we do recognize their diminished relevance.

Post #852034

Todd Payne

Posted Friday, January 22, 2010 7:49 AM

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Is this really a new problem? Before the printing press there was much less information that could be "remembered". Then computers came along, then data bases and then data storage got cheap. When I read the troubling example it seems to me that the fault lies not in the fact that the border guard was able to learn that Andrew Feldmar had admitted to using LSD in his youth. It is that this information was used to bar him from entering the United States.

Remember he wrote the article in 2001 and so he for what ever reason felt that the information about his youthful indescretions should still be remembered just 5 years earlier. The problem is how the information was used and the weight it was given. If he had been caught and convicted of a crime, and served time in jail, but after that reformed, should it be really be any different?

I am currently taking a class in database design, and one of the themes that is constantly drilled is that we take the data (a collection of facts) and make information from it and with that information we make decisions. Part of this process is deciding what facts are relevant to the decision we want to make. Does the fact that 40 years ago someone used LSD become relevent at a US border crossing? I think this is where the system failed.

Post #852042

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