Desperation on the Forums

  • Have to say it, but a classic example of the type of person that'll post something desperate: https://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/1932589/Determining-the-Years-Months-Weeks-and-Days-between-two-dates

    Then 20(ish) minutes later, the OP thinks: "I haven't had a response that helps me! I better not reply or ask further questions, so I'll just post my question again elsewhere. This'll solve my problem" https://stackoverflow.com/questions/49903501/sql-server-determining-the-years-months-weeks-and-days-between-two-dates#49903501

    Thom~

    Excuse my typos and sometimes awful grammar. My fingers work faster than my brain does.
    Larnu.uk

  • Jeff Mlakar - Wednesday, April 18, 2018 8:44 AM

    Chris Harshman - Wednesday, April 18, 2018 8:38 AM

    Sometimes I think the problem is that there are a number of people who seem to lack what I'd consider basic troubleshooting skills.  Those kind of people tend to build up a knowledge base that's formulaic, and they know if X happens then I do Y to fix it.  While that works for simple problems, if they encounter something slightly different, or something complex then they struggle, so Y doesn't seem to fix X2 like it did X, now what?  If people had better basic troubleshooting skills they could break down a problem and find the root cause of why something is wrong instead of just focusing on the fix.  Yes the fix is important, and when something isn't working that's what their boss is hovering over them to get done, but without the troubleshooting the fixes will often take longer to achieve.

    It's a mindset. There is a different skill utilized for developing new software vs maintaining other people's software (making hotfixes / patches), doing QA, and debugging / troubleshooting. I haven't run into a  lot of people who are strong "cross-discipline".

    It's also a human problem. This occurs in many industries, including our own, but it happens in medicine, engineering, construction, cooking, etc.

  • Steve Jones - SSC Editor - Wednesday, April 18, 2018 9:42 AM

    Jeff Mlakar - Wednesday, April 18, 2018 8:44 AM

    Chris Harshman - Wednesday, April 18, 2018 8:38 AM

    Sometimes I think the problem is that there are a number of people who seem to lack what I'd consider basic troubleshooting skills.  Those kind of people tend to build up a knowledge base that's formulaic, and they know if X happens then I do Y to fix it.  While that works for simple problems, if they encounter something slightly different, or something complex then they struggle, so Y doesn't seem to fix X2 like it did X, now what?  If people had better basic troubleshooting skills they could break down a problem and find the root cause of why something is wrong instead of just focusing on the fix.  Yes the fix is important, and when something isn't working that's what their boss is hovering over them to get done, but without the troubleshooting the fixes will often take longer to achieve.

    It's a mindset. There is a different skill utilized for developing new software vs maintaining other people's software (making hotfixes / patches), doing QA, and debugging / troubleshooting. I haven't run into a  lot of people who are strong "cross-discipline".

    It's also a human problem. This occurs in many industries, including our own, but it happens in medicine, engineering, construction, cooking, etc.

    Very much this. Some people respond best to formulas. Unfortunately, formulas don't always work.

    "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

  • patrickmcginnis59 10839 - Wednesday, April 18, 2018 5:01 AM

    Probably because the answer wasn't in all caps!

    Cracked me up.

  • Grant Fritchey - Monday, April 16, 2018 7:25 AM

    Sergiy - Monday, April 16, 2018 1:53 AM

    Look at the design of msdb.
    Look at the queries SQL Agent fires against this database.
    There is no surprise they needed to limit the length of history log for the jobs.
    It used to be 5k records for all jobs by default. Nowadays, with much more powerful servers with SSD's and massive amounts of memory you can afford to have longer history tracks. If you have no better use for the resources of the server.
    Look at SharePoint. The database simply is not allowed to be in full recovery mode. Otherwise it will simply kill any server within several hours.
    I cannot explain how horrified I was by the quality of SQL solutions used in one of the later MS products I happened to come across.

    How low must have been the entry barrier for those software engineers (if I may use this term) who designed those products?
    And it's Microsoft, the vendor of SQL Server, the software house which defines the standards, sets the benchmarks for the community.
    What to ask from developers who work for small software companies from the third world who learned from those "masters"?

    Heck, the continued ignorance of the Sharepoint team. They publish doing things to the database, still, that are just wrong.

    Sorry, pet peeve.

    the key to understanding SharePoint is, IMO, simply two straightforward pieces of advice.
    1)  buy the biggest box you can.  It still won't be big enough
    2)  hire the best (hugely expensive) SharePoint Admin you can find.  It still won't work

    Once you realise that the product is an utter sh*tpit from start to finish, and that this will only ever change for the even worse, you can start to come to terms with it. 
    Your users won't, of course.  They're going to expect it to work - poor sods.

    I'm a DBA.
    I'm not paid to solve problems. I'm paid to prevent them.

  • Im guess Im not as bothered by it. The person asking is new/inexperienced (and maybe lazy, but that's hard to tell) and wants to solve a problem. Searching for the problem is logical, but trusting the answer you find on some blog when you don't know if its author? Or if you find multiple answers? Or maybe their issue doesn't quite seem to match? Regardless of effort put in before they post here, they dared to do so. I say dared because for a lot (most) beginners asking a question is hard - it often invites scorn due to lack of whatever. I think it's easy to forget what it's like to be at that point. I have always thought it was incredibly important that they get a reply, even it was "I dont know either" and that we treat them kindly. If it was something easily searchable, note that in the reply - hey, next time, try this and show the search results for their question. I'm not suggesting we do homework for students, just to err on the side of helping (and I think we do).

    I'm also for doing what we can to teach them to fish and I like the question Grant asks - how do we do better? That's worth some thought, but it's a tough one. I'd love to see Steve put up some metrics. How many questions are searchable? How  many posters fail to improve on their later questions? Maybe every post (or first timer post) should get an nice mail from Steve with tips on posting, etiquette, etc.

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