• Jeff Moden - Saturday, October 13, 2018 10:25 AM

    Heh... I just saw your other post on the monster wide table that violated every form of normalization there is and where every update was preserved without the benefit of proper historical auditing structures (audit tables, etc) not to mention such problems as what if there is more than 5 children (or less than 5 children) and that the SSN columns don't appear to be encrypted, just to dog-ear a couple of the multitude of problems with that table.  Few could be both that ignorant and arrogant about T-SQL, PII, and databases in general, especially all at once.  So, switching gears and giving you the benefit of the doubt, could it be that maybe, just maybe, you're a whole lot smarter than you're currently letting on to?

    Could the following scenario actually be true?

    Could it be that you're actually VERY smart about SQL Server and T-SQL and, much more importantly, about the nature of people (especially in a "hostile to the DBA" environment) and that you're stuck with a whole herd of "developers" (lower case very intentional , in this case or, perhaps, an idiot savant contractor that you need to flush out to your management?) that write the kind of awful code that you posted on all three posts and you cannot convince them to do otherwise and that you're actually getting feedback from them about how good they think they are as their self-proclaimed line of defense?  And could it be that you actually made a deal with the developers that if you posted the code even biased in their "I'm pretty good at this" direction that folks on this forum would trash the original code and then show the right way to do it, which would absolutely win you the bet and compel the "developers" to start to listen to you?

    If so, then you're a very clever and wise person.  If not, then you're actually someone that needs some severe help with what a database actually is and how it should be used.

    Winner!  Well, not VERY smart, but smarter than the "idiot savant" who crapped this out.  The poor people who own the company had no idea what was under the hood.  They trusted a friend who "knows a great programmer." I have my work cut out for me, but luckily we now have some sharp SQL developers to help out.  Thank you for the posts, sorry for the way I went about it.