Are the posted questions getting worse?

  • frederico_fonseca - Thursday, January 17, 2019 4:10 PM

    Grant Fritchey - Thursday, January 17, 2019 12:48 PM

    Please, please, please, do not dog pile. However, you need to go and look at this execution plan. It's a doozy.

    Darn... been a very long time since I saw this type of partitioning.
    Wonder if someone should suggest to merge the older tables onto a single table and change the underlying views - most likely the older ones not actively used anymore except on those views.
    Just not to tell them to upgrade to 2016 sp1 and use proper partitioning.

    We're on 2012 and partitioning works very well for us.

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  • ChrisM@Work - Friday, January 18, 2019 6:19 AM

    I'd put the whole lot into one table. There are only about 500 million rows.

    Still could use an indexed view to pre-aggregate the data for reporting.

  • ChrisM@Work - Friday, January 18, 2019 6:19 AM

    Lynn Pettis - Thursday, January 17, 2019 1:40 PM

    Grant Fritchey - Thursday, January 17, 2019 12:48 PM

    Please, please, please, do not dog pile. However, you need to go and look at this execution plan. It's a doozy.

    Not wanting to pile on so I'll ask the question here, wouldn't it make sense to use indexed views to pre-aggregate  the data since this looks like historical reporting?

    I'd put the whole lot into one table. There are only about 500 million rows.

    He he, I like the approach, be a big daddy data
    😎

  • Just had one of those wonderful chats with an employment agency.

    It was initially about a role near by. But its big data and I don't have real world experience of that. 
    I mentioned that in my reply. He said that I didn't seem interested in it. Oh no I am interested but but I don't have any real world experience of 2 of the 4 technologies in the essentials and I thought I should mention that as it might be an issue for the company. I said I am interested in it, but it comes down the the company...
    Oh yes, he replies, that's probably a non starter then.

    Told him my contract ends at the end of March.
    Him: Why are you looking?
    You got in touch with me on LinkedIn, and as my contract finishes in 10 weeks I am happy to reply to such emails / calls etc.
    Him: so why are you looking for a new role, why are you leaving you current one? Its a contract and a migration project which should be finished by then. Ok that was a semi intelligent question, but I'd mentioned I was on contract 2 or 3 times by then.
    him: well I have some other roles in London that you might be better suited to. What do you work with.
    SQL Server, SSIS, SSRS, bit of SSAS, not done any PowerBI in the wild, etc...
    He then proceeded to mention Java, PHP etc.. pretty much the LAMP stack, but didn't mention mySQL... for one of the other roles.
    I reply I've not done any of them (OK I've done some Java, but we all have, haven't we?)...
    His reply - you are pretty niche then?
    (facepalm)
    And there was me thinking I was a Jack of all trades!

    He also asked my notice period, its a month, but as I said the contracts ends in 10 weeks so I wouldn't be looking to terminate early.

    Yes I know they are on the whole, sales people and aren't actually interested in you/me... But still!

    Rodders..

  • For heaven's sake! How frustrating.

  • rodjkidd - Monday, January 21, 2019 8:20 AM

    Just had one of those wonderful chats with an employment agency.

    It was initially about a role near by. But its big data and I don't have real world experience of that. 
    I mentioned that in my reply. He said that I didn't seem interested in it. Oh no I am interested but but I don't have any real world experience of 2 of the 4 technologies in the essentials and I thought I should mention that as it might be an issue for the company. I said I am interested in it, but it comes down the the company...
    Oh yes, he replies, that's probably a non starter then.

    Told him my contract ends at the end of March.
    Him: Why are you looking?
    You got in touch with me on LinkedIn, and as my contract finishes in 10 weeks I am happy to reply to such emails / calls etc.
    Him: so why are you looking for a new role, why are you leaving you current one? Its a contract and a migration project which should be finished by then. Ok that was a semi intelligent question, but I'd mentioned I was on contract 2 or 3 times by then.
    him: well I have some other roles in London that you might be better suited to. What do you work with.
    SQL Server, SSIS, SSRS, bit of SSAS, not done any PowerBI in the wild, etc...
    He then proceeded to mention Java, PHP etc.. pretty much the LAMP stack, but didn't mention mySQL... for one of the other roles.
    I reply I've not done any of them (OK I've done some Java, but we all have, haven't we?)...
    His reply - you are pretty niche then?
    (facepalm)
    And there was me thinking I was a Jack of all trades!

    He also asked my notice period, its a month, but as I said the contracts ends in 10 weeks so I wouldn't be looking to terminate early.

    Yes I know they are on the whole, sales people and aren't actually interested in you/me... But still!

    Rodders..

    Sadly that person wasn't even paying any attention to what you told them. I don't how it work in the UK but in the US all the recruiters have pretty much the same positions available and they are all racing to fill it faster than everybody else. Find a recruiter you can connect with and seems to have a base level of understanding of technology. Keep in mind these are NOT highly technical people but some of them actually do have a brain. You should try to find one of those people.

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    Understanding and Using APPLY (Part 2) - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/APPLY/69954/

  • rodjkidd - Monday, January 21, 2019 8:20 AM

    Just had one of those wonderful chats with an employment agency.

    It was initially about a role near by. But its big data and I don't have real world experience of that. 
    I mentioned that in my reply. He said that I didn't seem interested in it. Oh no I am interested but but I don't have any real world experience of 2 of the 4 technologies in the essentials and I thought I should mention that as it might be an issue for the company. I said I am interested in it, but it comes down the the company...
    Oh yes, he replies, that's probably a non starter then.

    Told him my contract ends at the end of March.
    Him: Why are you looking?
    You got in touch with me on LinkedIn, and as my contract finishes in 10 weeks I am happy to reply to such emails / calls etc.
    Him: so why are you looking for a new role, why are you leaving you current one? Its a contract and a migration project which should be finished by then. Ok that was a semi intelligent question, but I'd mentioned I was on contract 2 or 3 times by then.
    him: well I have some other roles in London that you might be better suited to. What do you work with.
    SQL Server, SSIS, SSRS, bit of SSAS, not done any PowerBI in the wild, etc...
    He then proceeded to mention Java, PHP etc.. pretty much the LAMP stack, but didn't mention mySQL... for one of the other roles.
    I reply I've not done any of them (OK I've done some Java, but we all have, haven't we?)...
    His reply - you are pretty niche then?
    (facepalm)
    And there was me thinking I was a Jack of all trades!

    He also asked my notice period, its a month, but as I said the contracts ends in 10 weeks so I wouldn't be looking to terminate early.

    Yes I know they are on the whole, sales people and aren't actually interested in you/me... But still!

    Rodders..

    This is pretty common, unfortunately. 

    Years ago I had an agency send me to an interview for a 6 week project to write a message bus using C#.  I told them, uh, I don't really do that.  
    Go to the interview, I was the only person who actually understood what needed to be done.  How to actually do it was another question...

    After 4 weeks of looking at a computer, they asked me to leave because I didn't really get any work done.  I had spent the entire time mucking my way around learning C#!

    Michael L John
    If you assassinate a DBA, would you pull a trigger?
    To properly post on a forum:
    http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/61537/

  • Sean,

    Its pretty much the same here. I have a couple of very good agencies I keep in touch with. I've have to deal with agencies pretty much my entire IT profession. This one just made me laugh a bit, it was very much a can they tick the box to fill the role type.

    It was the niche comment and why did I get in touch with him... It was only Friday when he reached out to me over LinkedIn... I mean three sleeps. Really! πŸ˜€

    Rodders...

  • Beatrix, 

    Yes it was and a bit funny. I've had a few over the years where I wonder why are you calling / emailing me?

    Michael,

    Oh wow, well at least you got to muck about with C#...

    Which reminds me, the one he sent the job spec over for, it has C# on the shopping list... Only he didn't know you say C Sharp... I can't remember what he did say... It wasn't C hash or C pound.... It may go some way to explain the niche comment. I didn't correct him though.

    Rodders...

  • rodjkidd - Monday, January 21, 2019 9:25 AM

    Beatrix, 

    Yes it was and a bit funny. I've had a few over the years where I wonder why are you calling / emailing me?

    Michael,

    Oh wow, well at least you got to muck about with C#...

    Which reminds me, the one he sent the job spec over for, it has C# on the shopping list... Only he didn't know you say C Sharp... I can't remember what he did say... It wasn't C hash or C pound.... It may go some way to explain the niche comment. I didn't correct him though.

    Rodders...

    I like when the spec, or the conversation asks for things like "10 years experience in Azure SQL Databases", or "familiar with XYZ in SQL 2010, SQL 2014, or SQL 2017".
    Or, even worse, the specs that include skills that are possessed by maybe 2 or 3 people in the world.  10 Years Oracle design and tuning, 10 years SQL design and tuning, 10 years Java development, 10 years Visual Studio development, extensive networking and security.  Active Directory is a plus...

    Michael L John
    If you assassinate a DBA, would you pull a trigger?
    To properly post on a forum:
    http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/61537/

  • My favorite job description in an actual ad was one that I found in a newspaper right around 2003.  It was short, sweet, and to the point.

    "SQL Wanted: Basically, we need someone that can look at T-SQL code, figure out what's wrong, and fix it."

    That was the whole ad.  I took the ad with me to the company that placed the ad and said "Hi.  My name is Jeff Moden, I get it, and I'm your man".  They knew immediately what I was talking about ("Oh! So you're here for the SQL job?") without me even showing them the ad and it turned out to be the best job I ever had until my current job.

    --Jeff Moden


    RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
    First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
    ________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

    Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.


    Helpful Links:
    How to post code problems
    How to Post Performance Problems
    Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

  • Michael L John - Monday, January 21, 2019 9:35 AM

    rodjkidd - Monday, January 21, 2019 9:25 AM

    Beatrix, 

    Yes it was and a bit funny. I've had a few over the years where I wonder why are you calling / emailing me?

    Michael,

    Oh wow, well at least you got to muck about with C#...

    Which reminds me, the one he sent the job spec over for, it has C# on the shopping list... Only he didn't know you say C Sharp... I can't remember what he did say... It wasn't C hash or C pound.... It may go some way to explain the niche comment. I didn't correct him though.

    Rodders...

    I like when the spec, or the conversation asks for things like "10 years experience in Azure SQL Databases", or "familiar with XYZ in SQL 2010, SQL 2014, or SQL 2017".
    Or, even worse, the specs that include skills that are possessed by maybe 2 or 3 people in the world.  10 Years Oracle design and tuning, 10 years SQL design and tuning, 10 years Java development, 10 years Visual Studio development, extensive networking and security.  Active Directory is a plus...

    I've had a few over the years where they also quote versions that don't exist. SQL Server 2003 - I seem to remember. The first one or two I'd point out sorry that doesn't exist, but the recruiter is amendment they are right!  Also a few asking for x years of something that has only just been around for a year. I take most of it now with a pinch of salt. But yesterdays has an anecdotal quality that I will be dinning out on for some time πŸ˜€

    Rodders...

  • rodjkidd - Monday, January 21, 2019 8:20 AM

    Just had one of those wonderful chats with an employment agency.

    It was initially about a role near by. But its big data and I don't have real world experience of that. 
    I mentioned that in my reply. He said that I didn't seem interested in it. Oh no I am interested but but I don't have any real world experience of 2 of the 4 technologies in the essentials and I thought I should mention that as it might be an issue for the company. I said I am interested in it, but it comes down the the company...
    Oh yes, he replies, that's probably a non starter then.

    Told him my contract ends at the end of March.
    Him: Why are you looking?
    You got in touch with me on LinkedIn, and as my contract finishes in 10 weeks I am happy to reply to such emails / calls etc.
    Him: so why are you looking for a new role, why are you leaving you current one? Its a contract and a migration project which should be finished by then. Ok that was a semi intelligent question, but I'd mentioned I was on contract 2 or 3 times by then.
    him: well I have some other roles in London that you might be better suited to. What do you work with.
    SQL Server, SSIS, SSRS, bit of SSAS, not done any PowerBI in the wild, etc...
    He then proceeded to mention Java, PHP etc.. pretty much the LAMP stack, but didn't mention mySQL... for one of the other roles.
    I reply I've not done any of them (OK I've done some Java, but we all have, haven't we?)...
    His reply - you are pretty niche then?
    (facepalm)
    And there was me thinking I was a Jack of all trades!

    He also asked my notice period, its a month, but as I said the contracts ends in 10 weeks so I wouldn't be looking to terminate early.

    Yes I know they are on the whole, sales people and aren't actually interested in you/me... But still!

    Rodders..

    He sounds like one of the less harmful variety of recruiting agents.  The ones to beware of are the ones who both lie to you about what the job involves and lie to the potential employer about your experience (sometimes editing your CV without telling you), the ones who decide not to send your CV to a firm whose requirements it meets because they want a mate of theirs to get the job but tell you that they have sent it to the firm, and the ones who send your cv to every firm with a job to offer no matter whether you are qualified for it and no matter that you clearly wouldn't consider accepting it (if they do that enough you become known as someone who is applying for anything regardless of fit, which is not good for your career prospects).

    I came across a real bad case in 1996 when sent a CV to someone in connection with a paticular job advert.  After a while with no response I asked him what was going on.  He told me that he couldn't get any response out of the HR people at the company.  Seems strange, I thought, and asked him to push it.  After a while still no response, and he told me had pushed it but got no reply.   So I decided to short circuit the process and sent an email to my old friend the founder and CEO of the firm where the job was - after all, he had been trying to recruit me and some of my colleagues for years.  Result: immediate interview, job, and HR director absolutely furious with a recruitment agency which had never sent my CV to the firm despite it covering all the requirements.

    But the agents I hate most were the ones who sent me hundreds of totally irrelevant CVs when I was recruiting in teh early 2000s - something like 99% of all CVs I was sent when recruiting for fairly senior developer jobs (requiring a few years serious C++ experience plus a decent unerstanding of parallel systems, and good practical knowledge both of html and other web related stuff and related parsers, of relational database related stuff) met none of the requirements and were sent by me or by one of my direct repots to the round file. Most of the remaining 1% were discussed between us and discarded.  The amount of time I and the senior members of my dividion spent looking at utterly irrelevant CVs was a real brake on development.

    Tom

  • TomThomson - Tuesday, January 22, 2019 9:28 AM

    He sounds like one of the less harmful variety of recruiting agents.  The ones to beware of are the ones who both lie to you about what the job involves and lie to the potential employer about your experience (sometimes editing your CV without telling you), the ones who decide not to send your CV to a firm whose requirements it meets because they want a mate of theirs to get the job but tell you that they have sent it to the firm, and the ones who send your cv to every firm with a job to offer no matter whether you are qualified for it and no matter that you clearly wouldn't consider accepting it (if they do that enough you become known as someone who is applying for anything regardless of fit, which is not good for your career prospects).

    I came across a real bad case in 1996 when sent a CV to someone in connection with a paticular job advert.  After a while with no response I asked him what was going on.  He told me that he couldn't get any response out of the HR people at the company.  Seems strange, I thought, and asked him to push it.  After a while still no response, and he told me had pushed it but got no reply.   So I decided to short circuit the process and sent an email to my old friend the founder and CEO of the firm where the job was - after all, he had been trying to recruit me and some of my colleagues for years.  Result: immediate interview, job, and HR director absolutely furious with a recruitment agency which had never sent my CV to the firm despite it covering all the requirements.

    But the agents I hate most were the ones who sent me hundreds of totally irrelevant CVs when I was recruiting in teh early 2000s - something like 99% of all CVs I was sent when recruiting for fairly senior developer jobs (requiring a few years serious C++ experience plus a decent unerstanding of parallel systems, and good practical knowledge both of html and other web related stuff and related parsers, of relational database related stuff) met none of the requirements and were sent by me or by one of my direct repots to the round file. Most of the remaining 1% were discussed between us and discarded.  The amount of time I and the senior members of my dividion spent looking at utterly irrelevant CVs was a real brake on development.

    I had a recruiter once add abilities to my CV that I didn't possess. The job required some super deep knowledge of X509 to write a bunch of security stuff. When the recruiter asked if I knew anything about X509 I told them it is the standard for SSL but I didn't know much about how it works. When I got to the interview they started asking me all sorts of questions about how to handle various security aspects and how the relate to X509. Needless to say I had no answer to the question other than "I don't know". After 4-5 of these questions and me clearly have no idea of how it worked the interviewer asked me why I had inflated my CV to include stuff I clearly know nothing about. I was surprised to say the least and ask if they had a copy of my CV. Fortunately for me I always print a few copies for interviews just in case. The CV which I submitted to the recruiting agency and the one the interviewer had were very different. I was suddenly an expert in X509 when in reality I could barely spell it. It was the end of the formal interview but all had a good laugh about it. I doubt the recruiter had much of a laugh as they got a nasty call from me and likely their client. Needless to say I don't work with them anymore.

    _______________________________________________________________

    Need help? Help us help you.

    Read the article at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Best+Practices/61537/ for best practices on asking questions.

    Need to split a string? Try Jeff Modens splitter http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Tally+Table/72993/.

    Cross Tabs and Pivots, Part 1 – Converting Rows to Columns - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/T-SQL/63681/
    Cross Tabs and Pivots, Part 2 - Dynamic Cross Tabs - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Crosstab/65048/
    Understanding and Using APPLY (Part 1) - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/APPLY/69953/
    Understanding and Using APPLY (Part 2) - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/APPLY/69954/

  • Sean Lange - Tuesday, January 22, 2019 10:54 AM

    I had a recruiter once add abilities to my CV that I didn't possess. The job required some super deep knowledge of X509 to write a bunch of security stuff. When the recruiter asked if I knew anything about X509 I told them it is the standard for SSL but I didn't know much about how it works. When I got to the interview they started asking me all sorts of questions about how to handle various security aspects and how the relate to X509. Needless to say I had no answer to the question other than "I don't know". After 4-5 of these questions and me clearly have no idea of how it worked the interviewer asked me why I had inflated my CV to include stuff I clearly know nothing about. I was surprised to say the least and ask if they had a copy of my CV. Fortunately for me I always print a few copies for interviews just in case. The CV which I submitted to the recruiting agency and the one the interviewer had were very different. I was suddenly an expert in X509 when in reality I could barely spell it. It was the end of the formal interview but all had a good laugh about it. I doubt the recruiter had much of a laugh as they got a nasty call from me and likely their client. Needless to say I don't work with them anymore.

    I once dealt with a recruiter who would not tell me with whom I was interviewing until a day before the interview, despite the number of times I asked.  (He would ONLY tell me it was "an insurance company.")  And it turned out to be a company for which I had no interest in working.

    Since then, I absolutely refuse to acknowledge unsolicited recruiters.

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