Are the posted questions getting worse?

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Are the posted questions getting worse?

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Steve Jones - SSC Editor SSC Guru Points: 743368 More actions · Answer 1

Was? Is? meaning you tried it? If this is your post int he test thread, I see your response with 3 links.

frederico_fonseca SSCoach Points: 16347 More actions · Answer 2

my post had 4 links when I created it.

I have now edited it and added another 3 links (which also failed before if we added a second link to any post

Brandie Tarvin SSC Guru Points: 173152 More actions · Answer 3

Customer: We've been told index maintenance is taking too long because we have hundreds of millions of records in some tables on this VLDB. Data is ITD, so cannot be archived. Can you partition?

Me: Sure. Let me take a look.

First table, 27 columns, 15 indexes and only one column isn't listed in any of those indexes.

Who has the pork chop launcher?

Brandie Tarvin, MCITP Database AdministratorLiveJournal Blog: http://brandietarvin.livejournal.com/[/url]On LinkedIn!, Google+, and Twitter.Freelance Writer: ShadowrunLatchkeys: Nevermore, Latchkeys: The Bootleg War, and Latchkeys: Roscoes in the Night are now available on Nook and Kindle.

Brandie Tarvin SSC Guru Points: 173152 More actions · Answer 4

I don't know how many of you have seen this, but OUCH. True, funny, painful, true.

https://www.stvn.sh/writing/programming-still-sucks-fqffhyp

Brandie Tarvin, MCITP Database AdministratorLiveJournal Blog: http://brandietarvin.livejournal.com/[/url]On LinkedIn!, Google+, and Twitter.Freelance Writer: ShadowrunLatchkeys: Nevermore, Latchkeys: The Bootleg War, and Latchkeys: Roscoes in the Night are now available on Nook and Kindle.

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004810 More actions · Answer 5

I tried some things over on that thread where the post-spam-fix fix was being tested. I tried to break it like before and WOO-HOO!!! It looks like we're back in business!!!.

--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)

Grant Fritchey SSC Guru Points: 399445 More actions · Answer 6

Brandie Tarvin wrote:

I don't know how many of you have seen this, but OUCH. True, funny, painful, true. https://www.stvn.sh/writing/programming-still-sucks-fqffhyp

That was far too close to reality.

And the doll is on fire.

"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

Brandie Tarvin SSC Guru Points: 173152 More actions · Answer 7

SPAM has officially spread to the messages queue. In the past 24 hours, I've gotten 3 messages from the same user that look very spammy.

gsgd

Account

Last login: August 13th 2026

Login count: 5

Reputation: Newbie

Points: 5

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Brandie Tarvin, MCITP Database AdministratorLiveJournal Blog: http://brandietarvin.livejournal.com/[/url]On LinkedIn!, Google+, and Twitter.Freelance Writer: ShadowrunLatchkeys: Nevermore, Latchkeys: The Bootleg War, and Latchkeys: Roscoes in the Night are now available on Nook and Kindle.

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004810 More actions · Answer 8

Brandie Tarvin wrote:

SPAM has officially spread to the messages queue. In the past 24 hours, I've gotten 3 messages from the same user that look very spammy. gsgdAccountLast login: August 13th 2026Login count: 5Reputation: NewbiePoints: 5

I think they've relaxed a bit on spam because the anti-spam rules were keeping people from posting. For example, me. It's not uncommon for me to answer a post with more than 1 link and it's not uncommon for me to rapidly post more than one reply on any given thread to answer more than one person on the thread.

Getting spam on your private messages on this site is another thing, though. I've never seen that before.

--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)

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004810 More actions · Answer 9

Brandie Tarvin wrote:

Customer: We've been told index maintenance is taking too long because we have hundreds of millions of records in some tables on this VLDB. Data is ITD, so cannot be archived. Can you partition? Me: Sure. Let me take a look.
First table, 27 columns, 15 indexes and only one column isn't listed in any of those indexes.
Who has the pork chop launcher?

I'm working with a 3rd party vendor that someone hired without checking with the DBA team that create a product that uses a table with 712 columns. The columns are named after the datatype and which occurrence number the data type is. For some examples..

VARCHAR50_9

VARCHARMAX_7

INT_12

DATETIME_15

For us, most of the columns are null. And, they use SSAS with a ton of views on the table to "customize" their train wreck for us.

Their archive process created a quarter Tera Byte log file and they weren't even aware. Their latest archive process is to delete the latest 3 million rows and replace them with the latest 3 million rows from the source. And, yes... it is actually a DELETE.

And, no... I couldn't make this up if I tried.

And, I almost forgot... they decided to do all of this, including the SSAS stuff, as an afterthought... and they did it on SQL Server Standard Edition and wonder why they're having memory problems, especially with SSAS.

--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)

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004810 More actions · Answer 10

Just testing after a fix on Norton Web Safe on my laptop.

Another fine reminder that "Change is inevitable... change for the better is not".

--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)

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004810 More actions · Answer 11

And... that worked.

--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)

Jo Pattyn SSC-Dedicated Points: 32718 More actions · Answer 12

That's an original way to handle your column names. Pretty much need a metadata mapper to translate your queries. Hope they don't change their datatypes often

Steve Jones - SSC Editor SSC Guru Points: 743368 More actions · Answer 13

Glad it worked. I assume a Norton update?

I find more and more people changing datatypes. I think I might need to adjust my "Zero downtime" talk to include that.

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004810 More actions · Answer 14

Steve Jones - SSC Editor wrote:

Glad it worked. I assume a Norton update?

I don't know if it was a Norton Update or not because I've not heard of anyone else having such a problem with the Norton product.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor wrote:

I find more and more people changing datatypes. I think I might need to adjust my "Zero downtime" talk to include that.

I'm guess you're responding to the 712 column "wonder" that I posted?

On that note, this is why a DBA needs to be brought in early on a design even if there aren't such problems as what I posted there. I've worked on teams where the Front-End programmers were the ones that designed the tables. Some do a pretty good job. Some let the machine do things for them and you end up with NUMERIC(19) for just about everything even for TinyInt or Bit requirements and NVARCHAR(256) for a whole lot of columns that might only need a CHAR(5) for example. Somehow, that type of thing makes it to production and when it gets hit with a little scale, people suddenly "get the datatype religion" but you can't afford the down time and, and, and.

On LinkedIn, a whole lot of people are preaching the "Done > Perfect" idea... And they have no idea what "Done" actually means. They frequently mean "shipped = 'Done'" and I don't need to tell you what can go wrong there. 😉

--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)

Brandie Tarvin SSC Guru Points: 173152 More actions · Answer 15

Jeff Moden wrote:

Steve Jones - SSC Editor wrote:
Glad it worked. I assume a Norton update?
I don't know if it was a Norton Update or not because I've not heard of anyone else having such a problem with the Norton product.
Steve Jones - SSC Editor wrote:
I find more and more people changing datatypes. I think I might need to adjust my "Zero downtime" talk to include that.
I'm guess you're responding to the 712 column "wonder" that I posted? On that note, this is why a DBA needs to be brought in early on a design even if there aren't such problems as what I posted there. I've worked on teams where the Front-End programmers were the ones that designed the tables. Some do a pretty good job. Some let the machine do things for them and you end up with NUMERIC(19) for just about everything even for TinyInt or Bit requirements and NVARCHAR(256) for a whole lot of columns that might only need a CHAR(5) for example. Somehow, that type of thing makes it to production and when it gets hit with a little scale, people suddenly "get the datatype religion" but you can't afford the down time and, and, and. On LinkedIn, a whole lot of people are preaching the "Done > Perfect" idea... And they have no idea what "Done" actually means. They frequently mean "shipped = 'Done'" and I don't need to tell you what can go wrong there. ??

If you want real fun regarding "shipped = 'Done'", research Outcome-Based Delivery. That's the new thing.

Well, I say "new" but we've been doing it for almost 4 years at this point.

Brandie Tarvin, MCITP Database AdministratorLiveJournal Blog: http://brandietarvin.livejournal.com/[/url]On LinkedIn!, Google+, and Twitter.Freelance Writer: ShadowrunLatchkeys: Nevermore, Latchkeys: The Bootleg War, and Latchkeys: Roscoes in the Night are now available on Nook and Kindle.