April 10, 2019 at 4:02 pm
BINGO!! I would guess over 90% of the people who come to this site are not on a mobile device. So why do we cater to such a small group and make the rest of us suffer?
Main reason: Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, etc, etc. Many of them put websites that have mobile accessibility (as well) higher in the results and getting hits from the search engines is really important for websites like this; which are aimed at helping communities. I think Steve went into more detail on this in one of his recent posts/articles
That isn't saying I condone the change, but I see why it's required. Personally, I think that the way the search engine's operate is flawed, as a site like this isn't for mobile users. We're developing on PC, and so the results should look good on PC and mobile shouldn't matter. That isn't however, how those search engines work and is (one reason) why SSC has had to change.
Thom~
Excuse my typos and sometimes awful grammar. My fingers work faster than my brain does.
Larnu.uk
April 10, 2019 at 4:09 pm
below86 wrote:BINGO!! I would guess over 90% of the people who come to this site are not on a mobile device. So why do we cater to such a small group and make the rest of us suffer?
Main reason: Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, etc, etc. Many of them put websites that have mobile accessibility (as well) higher in the results and getting hits from the search engines is really important for websites like this; which are aimed at helping communities. I think Steve went into move detail on this in one of his recent posts/articles That isn't saying I condone the change, but I see why it's required. Personally, I think that the way the search engine's operate is flawed, as a site like this isn't for mobile users. We're developing on PC, and so the results should look good on PC and mobile shouldn't matter. That isn't however, how those search engines work and is (one reason) why SSC has had to change.
And upgrade path issues and maintainability and extensibility and... Pretty much all the stuff that forces us to upgrade all over the place, all the time. The tech really was seriously out of date. While these teething pains are very real today, we'll get through them and then have a radically more modern platform on which to improve and grow.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
April 10, 2019 at 4:29 pm
below86 wrote:When I came back to work Monday I was initially excited to see we were on the new version of SSC. My excitement quickly faded. I read Steve's article the other day about "You're not really good at SQL Server". The line "You aren’t that good at your jobs" really sticks out to me. While I may not "know" everything I should know, I feel, and my employer feels I'm damn good at my job. But that's away from my point. I would like to say whoever designed this new version "isn't that good at their job". Now I can't totally blame the people who coded this steaming pile of you know what. I think the blame has to go to the people who reviewed this design and gave it the green light. One has to wonder if they are also very good at their jobs, or if their views can be trusted. Now before I left for my vacation I had seen the links to go out and review the new version for my self, but there just wasn't enough time to get that done. While Steve's article may have been a little harsh, I'm sure some will see my critic of the new site as a bit harsh. But we are all adults and should be able to handle it. I would be curious to know if the traffic on this site has slowed since the new version, I know I find myself coming out here less.
While I agree the new site has some major problems it also has to be said that you are partly to blame. You didn't find the time to help test and point out the issues. This site is free and doesn't generate much revenue (only the few ads and that can't amount to much). They were relying on the current user base to help and it seems that far too many of us fell into the trap of not putting in the effort to help. I myself did do some testing but it is difficult to test all aspects of the site without some kind of plan. I obviously didn't test as many aspects as I should have. So many things are just buggy or plain bizarre. However, they have made quite a few improvements over the last week or so. However, I have found myself here a lot less since the last improvement a couple of years ago.
Yeah, but I did find the time on the first round of limited public access and I provided a list of faults before the release. A whole lot of them (I think all of them) ended up still being present on release day and more (like the broken links issues and the missing "resources" issues for articles).
As for "below86", not every user can be a member of a UAT effort and not everyone has the time to do so for free. Besides, even if he had, they still released the code with a shedload of faults that testers like me cited well before the release.
I love SQLServerCentral.com and the community that has formed because of it but this release is a poster child for how NOT to do a release and a poster child for the list of excuses and stupid justifications for why the code was broken so very badly or previous highly useful features were missing. Then we hear about how so many people are working after hours to fix things and a lot of those things had been previously identified.
I have no pity and no love for the people involved in this release. It's the worst code release I've ever seen since 1967 with the only exception being the 737 MAX code. For those people working diligently on fixes, thanks but you were also part of the original problem. This release really sucked and continues to suck.
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
April 10, 2019 at 5:39 pm
Some of this is the result of the times we are in. We all know the pressure of release and fix it later competing with if everything gets fixed first, we will never release.
I imagine it was quite the internal struggle with when to release, and see they have made a number of fixes. This site is free, and there are many truly world class contributors to which we are all thankful for.
The developers might be in a no win situation - likely not using the site, or calling the shots. I can also remember times in my career where people would sign off on their QA testing, we would release, then have an emergency fix and migration to production. This was with scripts documenting tests and paid employees.
In today’s world, the pressure of speed takes more precedent over quality than many of us like. Probably something many of us wish we had more control over.
I just hope that even though there is frustration out there, that it doesn’t stop the fantastic help from continuing to contribute. That would be a much larger loss than a less than seamless upgrade.
April 10, 2019 at 6:14 pm
Sean Lange wrote:below86 wrote:When I came back to work Monday I was initially excited to see we were on the new version of SSC. My excitement quickly faded. I read Steve's article the other day about "You're not really good at SQL Server". The line "You aren’t that good at your jobs" really sticks out to me. While I may not "know" everything I should know, I feel, and my employer feels I'm damn good at my job. But that's away from my point. I would like to say whoever designed this new version "isn't that good at their job". Now I can't totally blame the people who coded this steaming pile of you know what. I think the blame has to go to the people who reviewed this design and gave it the green light. One has to wonder if they are also very good at their jobs, or if their views can be trusted. Now before I left for my vacation I had seen the links to go out and review the new version for my self, but there just wasn't enough time to get that done. While Steve's article may have been a little harsh, I'm sure some will see my critic of the new site as a bit harsh. But we are all adults and should be able to handle it. I would be curious to know if the traffic on this site has slowed since the new version, I know I find myself coming out here less.
While I agree the new site has some major problems it also has to be said that you are partly to blame. You didn't find the time to help test and point out the issues. This site is free and doesn't generate much revenue (only the few ads and that can't amount to much). They were relying on the current user base to help and it seems that far too many of us fell into the trap of not putting in the effort to help. I myself did do some testing but it is difficult to test all aspects of the site without some kind of plan. I obviously didn't test as many aspects as I should have. So many things are just buggy or plain bizarre. However, they have made quite a few improvements over the last week or so. However, I have found myself here a lot less since the last improvement a couple of years ago.
Yeah, but I did find the time on the first round of limited public access and I provided a list of faults before the release. A whole lot of them (I think all of them) ended up still being present on release day and more (like the broken links issues and the missing "resources" issues for articles). As for "below86", not every user can be a member of a UAT effort and not everyone has the time to do so for free. Besides, even if he had, they still released the code with a shedload of faults that testers like me cited well before the release. I love SQLServerCentral.com and the community that has formed because of it but this release is a poster child for how NOT to do a release and a poster child for the list of excuses and stupid justifications for why the code was broken so very badly or previous highly useful features were missing. Then we hear about how so many people are working after hours to fix things and a lot of those things had been previously identified. I have no pity and no love for the people involved in this release. It's the worst code release I've ever seen since 1967 with the only exception being the 737 MAX code. For those people working diligently on fixes, thanks but you were also part of the original problem. This release really sucked and continues to suck.
Another HOME RUN by Jeff, well said.
-------------------------------------------------------------
we travel not to escape life but for life not to escape us
Don't fear failure, fear regret.
April 10, 2019 at 6:30 pm
Sean Lange wrote:below86 wrote:When I came back to work Monday I was initially excited to see we were on the new version of SSC. My excitement quickly faded. I read Steve's article the other day about "You're not really good at SQL Server". The line "You aren’t that good at your jobs" really sticks out to me. While I may not "know" everything I should know, I feel, and my employer feels I'm damn good at my job. But that's away from my point. I would like to say whoever designed this new version "isn't that good at their job". Now I can't totally blame the people who coded this steaming pile of you know what. I think the blame has to go to the people who reviewed this design and gave it the green light. One has to wonder if they are also very good at their jobs, or if their views can be trusted. Now before I left for my vacation I had seen the links to go out and review the new version for my self, but there just wasn't enough time to get that done. While Steve's article may have been a little harsh, I'm sure some will see my critic of the new site as a bit harsh. But we are all adults and should be able to handle it. I would be curious to know if the traffic on this site has slowed since the new version, I know I find myself coming out here less.
While I agree the new site has some major problems it also has to be said that you are partly to blame. You didn't find the time to help test and point out the issues. This site is free and doesn't generate much revenue (only the few ads and that can't amount to much). They were relying on the current user base to help and it seems that far too many of us fell into the trap of not putting in the effort to help. I myself did do some testing but it is difficult to test all aspects of the site without some kind of plan. I obviously didn't test as many aspects as I should have. So many things are just buggy or plain bizarre. However, they have made quite a few improvements over the last week or so. However, I have found myself here a lot less since the last improvement a couple of years ago.
Yeah, but I did find the time on the first round of limited public access and I provided a list of faults before the release. A whole lot of them (I think all of them) ended up still being present on release day and more (like the broken links issues and the missing "resources" issues for articles). As for "below86", not every user can be a member of a UAT effort and not everyone has the time to do so for free. Besides, even if he had, they still released the code with a shedload of faults that testers like me cited well before the release. I love SQLServerCentral.com and the community that has formed because of it but this release is a poster child for how NOT to do a release and a poster child for the list of excuses and stupid justifications for why the code was broken so very badly or previous highly useful features were missing. Then we hear about how so many people are working after hours to fix things and a lot of those things had been previously identified. I have no pity and no love for the people involved in this release. It's the worst code release I've ever seen since 1967 with the only exception being the 737 MAX code. For those people working diligently on fixes, thanks but you were also part of the original problem. This release really sucked and continues to suck.
Actually I think the release was worse than the test site. I also had pointed out several flaws/issues but it seems like once it was released those bugs had children and spread like a virus. From my experience the released version was far buggier than the test site.
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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/
April 10, 2019 at 6:38 pm
The Dixie Flatline wrote:And this thread just keeps on keeping on... This is a pure rant, so read at your own risk. I have been involved in the interview process for a senior sql developer at my company and have yet to find a candidate possessing even intermediate-level knowledge. Two different people have told me that the questions I ask are "brutal." (What is a covering index? Do you use WITH(NOLOCK)? If so why? How would you make sure that an insert to table A followed by an update to table B is treated as a single atomic transaction?) The candidates are supposedly being screened before they get to the interview, and all look godlike on paper. Looking at a resume' appears to be wasted time. Am I just being too demanding, or have any of y'all had a similar experience?
Similar experiences. I really think lots of people have 1-2 years of experience that is then multiplied out to their current time-in-rate. Your questions honestly don't sound that tough either. One of my was "What's the difference between a deadlock and a block?" I even spelled out the words so there would be no confusion. Almost every single time, I got a careful explanation of blocking followed by an equally careful explanation of blocking (no, not typos).
Aside from the apparently omnipresent inability to regurgitate "getdate()" or any of the several other methods of retrieving the current system time with t-sql one of the funniest was in an interview about 5 years ago. I asked the candidate (who had already failed the getdate question), "Can you explain sql injection and some things we can do to avoid it". I was treated to a nearly 5 minute monologue that spanned the whole gamut of crazy. They talked about locking, they talked about dependency injection in c#, and a few other random paths finally ending on some explanation about how sql injection can be leveraged when implementing CLR to avoid having to know the datatypes ahead of time. I then asked them to explain the concept of Reflection in dotnet (which seemed vaguely like what they were trying to explain) and was this time given a much better answer. "I don't know too much about that". These people are out there and they are taking our jobs. Worse though is that they are writing code that we are going to inherit at some point.
_______________________________________________________________
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/
April 10, 2019 at 8:02 pm
How about people that just implement missing index recommendations that create a nonclustered index that is a covering index and recreates the entire table? Yes, I found one in a copy of a production database.
April 10, 2019 at 8:07 pm
How about people that just implement missing index recommendations that create a nonclustered index that is a covering index and recreates the entire table? Yes, I found one in a copy of a production database.
I'm wondering if it was named as [<Name of Missing Index, sysname,>]
April 10, 2019 at 8:15 pm
Here is the name: Missing_IXNC_auditDetails_processedDate_total_890D7
April 10, 2019 at 8:20 pm
Here is the name: Missing_IXNC_auditDetails_processedDate_total_890D7
Oh dear lord....
_______________________________________________________________
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/
April 10, 2019 at 8:28 pm
Lynn Pettis wrote:How about people that just implement missing index recommendations that create a nonclustered index that is a covering index and recreates the entire table? Yes, I found one in a copy of a production database.
I'm wondering if it was named as [<Name of Missing Index, sysname,>]
Ahhhh.. I got one of those on my current CRM setup - was removed as soon as I saw it 🙂
April 10, 2019 at 8:36 pm
Yea, I can't do that as the production server is at CENTCOM.
April 10, 2019 at 9:15 pm
My $0.02 about the new site...
First, I miss the count of likes (for threads and individual comments). No nobody knows if you "liked" a thread or comment.
As someone with articles published - my bigger concern though is what has happened to the Google search results for SSC. If I search for DelimitedSplit8K, for example I Jeff's article would be the first result. Now it's not even on the first Google search page.
I noticed too that the article URLS have changed (e.g. My N-Grams article used to be https://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/142316/ but now it's https://www.sqlservercentral.com/forums/topic/nasty-fast-n-grams-part-1-character-level-unigrams.) The old URL is still coming up in Google searches. I wonder how big of a problem this is.
Lastly - If you are an author you cannot see a list of your own articles. If you have something published on SSC - go to your article and click on your name at the top of the article. This is not a problem when I look at other authors, just my own stuff; I get:
Oops! That page can’t be found.
All this said - SSC has changed my career. It's still my home and the best site for learning about SQL Server.
-- Itzik Ben-Gan 2001
April 10, 2019 at 9:22 pm
My $0.02 about the new site... First, I miss the count of likes (for threads and individual comments). No nobody knows if you "liked" a thread or comment. As someone with articles published - my bigger concern though is what has happened to the Google search results for SSC. If I search for DelimitedSplit8K, for example I Jeff's article would be the first result. Now it's not even on the first Google search page. I noticed too that the article URLS have changed (e.g. My N-Grams article used to be https://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/142316/ but now it's https://www.sqlservercentral.com/forums/topic/nasty-fast-n-grams-part-1-character-level-unigrams.) The old URL is still coming up in Google searches. I wonder how big of a problem this is. Lastly - If you are an author you cannot see a list of your own articles. If you have something published on SSC - go to your article and click on your name at the top of the article. This is not a problem when I look at other authors, just my own stuff; I get: Oops! That page can’t be found. All this said - SSC has changed my career. It's still my home and the best site for learning about SQL Server.
The broken likes problem is pretty significant. And yeah, there's no Authors page and I can't see a list of my own articles. Granted, I didn't have many, but I can't even see the short list.
The other major problem with the articles is that the attached files are gone. For people that do what I do and attach the SQL files with all the code, it makes the article far less useful.
SSC has also had a really positive impact on my career as well. For the most part, it's a great community of people helping others.
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