The Heap™ – Consultancy ©® - 2014-04-16 (page 1 of 2)

6:50 AM

Flashback query in Oracle lets you specify ANY point in time if you still have the logs SELECT * FROM THEPAST AS OF TIMESTAMP <WHATEVER>

Nobody uses it though 'cos the amount of space needed in a busy system is bonkers

10:51 AM

@ypercube hi there, how's Greece?

ypercube

Weather was great.

Today we have snow :)

LOL, and I was upset because of 6-7 C and rain

ypercube

I'm in the mountains.

We had sun and about 15 yesterday

ah, that explains it

where about do you have mountains? close to Macedonia?

hi @Paul, just in time for dinner? :-)

Paul White

11:15 AM

Just returned from my day trip to Napier to see my sister (and fix her PC, sigh)

@Shog9 I did not know that. That will certainly have implications for my email policy in future. Assuming there is any of my soul left to save by now.

@swasheck What @SimonRigharts said :)

@PaulWhite your soul is growing a bit with each execution plan you dissect, so no worries here. You have enough soul for all the spammers out there.

Paul White

That is reassuring indeed.

1:00 PM

@Kermit is that me looking at your email address?

3

@JNK If I start receiving solicitations, I will come after you

@JNK well played

Q: Oracle Golden Gate Status table name in oracle enterprise manager

what is the minimum words required for a question?

-1

Oracle golden gate has a status in it which is from oracle enterprise manager, which table contains that status information?

1:26 PM

I's a cheater

True‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎ — billinkc 3 mins ago

@billinkc lol

FYI there is a valid use for it too

I've used it a couple of times to either identify a spammer (who posts pseudo-coherent stuff but uses email@mail.com as an email address) or to identify that someone is associated with a product and didn't disclose it

But all that stuff is hidden unless we click on a special icon, and when we do it's logged

1:43 PM

this might be an it depends question but if we need to use a linked server - would it be better to have a stored proc on the linked server where we pass the parameters to it to execute or use a linked server in the update statement?

yeah i've gathered that much. just wasn't aware that mods were even able to view it

can't really use a throw away e-mail since my SE account uses google authentication and my e-mail gets populated into that field automatically

Well nobody will be using it for anything

Less people that can see it the better

@bluefeet I think as a rule it's better to have stuff on the linked server execute there

@Kermit just to clarify it is not readily available, we actually have to click something to see it and that action is logged

1:45 PM

I know theres some weird things that happen with cardinality and filtering if you bring data across to process it

And exec plans for linked server queries can get messy quick

b/c the local engine doesn't have direct access to the all the stats etc on the remote machine

@bluefeet i get that

@JNK we currently are trying to remove bi-directional replication but before we can to that we have to update any procs to use a linked server instead. Some are very straightforward - create a new proc on the linked server to perform the updates, etc but then we have some squirrely ones that JOIN to a local table

@bluefeet yeah that's hard. I think you may just have to test it

I have seen some places recommend using a table-valued function on the remote server to do the filtering

@Kermit You'd probably be less concerned about your email if it wasn't your social security number and mother's maiden name @ gmail.com

@JNK that might be possible.

@JNK i'll be happy if the verbage gets changed on the input field tip

1:54 PM

@Kermit I'm not sure I agree it's misleading but I understand your point

It says "never shown" which to me means it's not shown on your profile

@JNK .. unless someone clicks a link that reveals it.

First Atomic Clock Wristwatch - leapsecond.com/pages/atomic-bill. :)

Q: Can I use vodka to clean my keyboard?

such a waste of vodka

16

I spilled beer on my keyboard a while back, and some of the keys are sticky. It's driving me crazy, and I don't have any isopropyl. Can I use vodka to clean it?

cleaning

@bluefeet can be cheaper then proper cleaner

@Kermit Well by "someone" you mean either an SE employee or an agent that had to agree to a pretty strict privacy policy before being given access to anything

2:02 PM

@JNK and by "strict privacy policy" you mean some a non-legally binding agreement

@Kermit you are over thinking this stuff

@Kermit in law, no. But it's grounds for dismissal

and IIRC in some jurisdictions is probably is an offence too

@gbn loss of mod privileges and an account ? SE should be held liable

regardless, i think i was just too naive and unaware that this was happening

@Kermit it's not legally binding between us and SE, but the verbage indicates basically that if there is a breach by a mod the mod would be legally liable for damages

i.e. you could sue the mod directly

@JNK i'm no legal expert, but i find that far fetched

2:05 PM

Rewind a bit. What happened?

@Kermit you're so innocent

I need to participate more

@gbn this -- meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/229605/…

@Kermit It's a very specific agreement indicating that you agree to use the info only in accordance with the privacy policy, not to disclose it to anyone, not to store or copy it, and only to use it for purposes of moderation

@gbn i "discovered" that mods have the ability to see e-mail addresses in my profile, after assuming that my e-mail was private

2:06 PM

@Kermit s'ok. My email is fuckoffmods@...

@JNK i'm with you. can't the e-mail be hashed and the hash used for purposes of moderation

@Kermit nope, because sometimes you need to see the domain

@gbn unfortunately since my account is tied to google, SE automatically uses my gmail account.

or the actual email for some other reason

@Kermit My SO is tied to gmail too, but I don't use it as primary

android backups

In other news, SQLBits in the UK: anyone going?

2:08 PM

@gbn TL;DR people who aren't employed by SE, but agreed to a non-legal agreement can see my e-mail even though the profile states e-mail is not displayed

stackoverflow.com/legal/moderator-agreement

if you are curious

@Kermit Kinda reasonble. I tend to be private on the interwebs. Except this avatar is actually me of course for comic value

@Kermit you could ask the SE team to kind of back up your account and restore it to another one that doesn't use google authentication? (sorry for the bad jargon)

I mean, if it's that important

@gbn just so you know the email is not readily available, we have to click on it and they log each time the private info it accessed

That goes for any non-public info

2:10 PM

@bluefeet s'ok for me. I'm not paranoid. The ways things are, people hand over all manner of information blindly these days

@Lamak i'm thinking about doing that, but i just wish i had more control over what is done with my e-mail

Debit Card

@NeedADebitCard

Please quit posting pictures of your debit cards, people.

254 tweets, 15.7k followers, following 0 users

@JNK what does "then-current" means there?. If it means what I think, then I don't see why use that term there

@JNK and if it's a 13 year old moderator?

@Kermit Can't be AFAIK

2:14 PM

@gbn you are freaking kidding me

@Kermit mental age of our client developers?

@gbn actual age of some of the moderators

@Lamak Nope. Front. Back, Codes . Names

I refuse to believe this

@Lamak We can't agree to something that doesn't exist yet, so it's saying you agree to whatever the privacy policy is at the time

2:16 PM

minitech ♦, British Columbia, Canada

80.5k 12 119 171

javascript php c# jquery html css regex

@Kermit he's not 13

@Kermit nah. You have COPA rules en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Online_Protection_Act

16, and lives in Canada. What legal authority does SE have there?

SE would find itself in all manner of trouble

@JNK couldn't it say that you agree with the current policy?. I mean, to me it sounds like it's saying that you agree with the policy that was valid at that time, so if it gets an "update", you don't necessarily are agreeing to that. Of course, I have trouble with my english and can be completely wrong

2:17 PM

@Kermit again, the agreement basically enables a damaged party to go after the mod directly

Why is a kid on SE anyway? Then as a mod? Who voted them to be a mod?

And I don't really care about it either, just find it weird

@Lamak no, because "current policy" in legalese means CURRENT

I wish I'd have had SE when I was 16 instead of drinking and wenching and learning about life. I wish I'd have had SE when I was 16 instead of drinking and wenching

@JNK I see. But (and this only for me to get a better comprehension of what I read), can this be read as "if we update our privacy policy, you as a mod aren't necessarily agreeing with it, only with the one that was current the time you got named as a mod?"

2:20 PM

@Lamak pretty much. I think if it there was a big change to the policy they would make everyone update their agreement

@JNK ok, thanks

We're out of space in tempdb (60GB). Been slogging through technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms176029(v=sql.105).aspx but nothing is jumping out at me as being a big user of the space

@JNK I agree with you. If they changed the policy we would probably have to agree to it again

@billinkc There's no open transactions right now?

None that I see

2:22 PM

I agree with you all. I still struggle to understand what I read in english so I appreciate that you clarified it for me

@billinkc Is RCSI enabled?

@gbn oh good one

Well, so much for determining what is going on. "SHUTDOWN is in progress."

could be versioning

SQL Server 2005 uses tempdb a lot more . Versioning/RCSI. Trigger INSERTED/DELETED tables (used to read T-log). Godknow what

2:24 PM

This is a 2012 box. And the fine folks working (poorly) with SB have a lot of trigger action going

But since it's rebooting, I'll put the kettle on and not worry about (it was dev anyway)

@billinkc lots of temp tables/ global ones? index rebuilds in tempdb?

I have some code that crashes SQL Server using $partition

On dev when someone experiments

We are not advanced enough to use partitions

Bastards

3:02 PM

@PaulWhite @SimonRigharts indeed. thanks for the information. i'm not good with the whole grokking the standards thing

@billinkc what's the workload?

@swasheck A lot of dumb sprinkled with my brilliance

Webmethods writes this big ol' XML blob to a table. Instead of trigger fires off rerouting the write to a SB queue which then parses the XML out into individual tables

so your potential for spill is significant?

Does the SB queue reader process use a bunch of temp tables?

I'm not sure if XML shredding uses tempdb directly but I think it might

@JNK it may use some if there's enough pressure to do so (spill to a temp table .... )

service broker and XML is my cup of tea though

3:18 PM

@JNK You, sir, are a masochist.

I spent a lot of time learning it and it's kind of obscure

@gbn what's the code do?

(other than crash dev)

@swasheck Partition elimination in some data warehouse load code

is the code trying to break the scheme and testing edge case scenarios?

It crashes when the range is too wide, or on some moon phase. Dunno really

@swasheck nah, devs try to sample data to improve the code and crash SQL Server

3:23 PM

guys.

Good morning

lots going on

guyz

srsly guyz

srzly

@gbn must be nice. our DW devs just slam data in with informatica. i imagine our partition function being something like poor atlas

hi @Shog9

It's so awesome

I'm just sitting here, drinking coffee...

...and staring at @Kermit's email address.

5

3:24 PM

drinkin' smokin' tryin' to free your mind

Don't mind me, I'm just backing up databases to NUL

@MikeFal logs, right?

@Shog9 I keep checking to see if he changed it

Oh, the fulls too

natch

@JNK not sure i can see it

3:25 PM

@Shog9 <3

@swasheck if you can something is wrong

@swasheck but I'll tweet it to you

@JNK dm, i hope

(if it's anything like i think it could be)

yeah it's NSFW

@Shog9 are you going to start spamming him?

or even better sign him up for tons of mailing lists

@Shog9 Ironically he doesn't care about YOU seeing it

3:27 PM

Sign him up for assorted catalogs

being employed by SE and all

@gbn interesting. legitimate bug?

Hrmmm.....new PoSH script, Spam-Kermit?

If it's a legitimate bug, it has a way of shutting SQL Server down

@JNK Because I've never been elected or otherwise-vetted by the community on any site? That's true, it does make me inherently more trust-worthy than the rest of you.

3:28 PM

@MikeFal spam kermit while dumping dbs to NUL

@Shog9 is SE hiring?

@billinkc do not follow

@Kermit always

@Shog9 can i work remotely?

@Kermit stackexchange.com/about/hiring

3:29 PM

@swasheck Reference to the congresscritter from MO that said a woman's body would reject pregnancy in cases of "legitimate" rape

Always Be Careersing

@Shog9 I'll give you $5 to move your HQ to chicago

@Kermit I'll give you $5 if you bring a decent hot dog to Colorado

Wow, he gets Paul White rates

@billinkc ooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh .... what a toolbag

3:30 PM

@Shog9 deal.

@Shog9 You should hire someone solely to write PIVOT queries...hint hint :)

@bluefeet i thought you just got a new gig

Interestingly enough, the "research" that prompted this sadly oft-repeated myth stems from nazi concentration camps. Don't think it was mengele (sp) but one of the doctors there was recording the pregnancy rate of prisoners

@bluefeet you're just a glutton for punishment, ain't ya

@swasheck yup sure did, just kidding but I love pivots

@Shog9 totally. I mean I do crossfit like daily that is total punishment

3:32 PM

@billinkc figures that a politician would unwittingly cite nazi research

@swasheck when you coming to Scottsdale?

@bluefeet end of may

@swasheck sorry it will be really hot then. You will want to just stay by the pool

@bluefeet yes. with drinks.

@Shog9 how's the new marijuana law working out? i heard there are many overdoses

3:36 PM

@Kermit :D

@Kermit Capitalism rolls on: washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/04/15/…

@Shog9 I guess I'll be delivering a decent hot dog to you soon

@Shog9 that's nuts

@bluefeet no. that's weed.

Yeah, nuts are sold by guys in trucks at intersections. You need to spend more time in CO

3:38 PM

@swasheck no personal experience with that here

@Shog9 too cold for my taste

@Kermit you should come to denver's sql sat

@swasheck when is that?

@swasheck not sure how feasible that will be with a 3 month old

What's occurring?

@bluefeet depends on where you go. I'm at ~7K feet - it's pretty balmy here. Down south, it's already in the 80s.

3:40 PM

@Shog9 how is breathing at 600 feet ASL ?

@Kermit 600? You're thinking of Wisconsin.

@Shog9 also, nice pun

;-)

@Shog9 I'm spoiled no snow here already in the 90s

Geography of Chicago

The city of Chicago is located in northern Illinois at the south western tip of Lake Michigan. It sits on the St. Lawrence Seaway continental divide at the site of the Chicago Portage, an ancient trade route connecting the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes watersheds. Geography Chicago's present natural geography is a result of the large glaciers of the Ice Age, namely the Wisconsinan Glaciation that carved out the modern basin of Lake Michigan (which formed from the glacier's meltwater). The city of Chicago itself sits on the Chicago Plain, a flat plain that was once the bottom of an...

> The city has been built on relatively flat land, the average height of land is 579 feet (176 m) above sea level

3:42 PM

...or that

how could you doubt me

@bluefeet yeah, the lack of conveniently-hot egg-frying surfaces must also be a burden when travelling

@Kermit psh. just bring baby kermit

@bluefeet sometime in september

@swasheck has anyone else brought their infant to a sql saturday?

@Shog9 totally, I love frying eggs everywhere I go during the summer

3:47 PM

@Kermit well i took my kids to abq (but wife was there to entertain them)

@Shog9 it gets pretty hot here, too. not like puh-hoe-ee-nix

@swasheck or Snotsdale

@swasheck Pueblo in the summer gets pretty close. Still a good 10° off the high, but plenty warm enough to destroy hardware without A/C

@bluefeet Scrotsdale

@Shog9 sure. man. i hated my time in pueblo

@swasheck not sure if my wife would be open to entertaining our infant while i hang out with nerds

@Kermit is she not supportive of your nerdy activities?

3:55 PM

@Kermit huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/14/…

Have you had your kid yet?

@Kermit yeah. a 3-month-old would be pretty tough

@bluefeet of course but i wouldn't want to drag her to denver

flying with a 3 month old would be a nightmarible

@Kermit you know what that means then, right?

ROAD TRIP!

@Kermit it's not that bad, actually

3:59 PM

@Shog9 fine i'll pick you up

deal

(@Kermit, @Shog9 is south of the event)

@swasheck well it's a road trip for a reason

@swasheck he can take Amtrak. Get off in La Junta, drive north.

@bluefeet Sept 20th

@Shog9 i want him to like our state. first impressions are important and la junta sends the wrong kind of message

4:01 PM

@swasheck It just gets better fromthere

@Shog9 because there's nowhere to go but up

:)

Nothing like coming in from the plains and seeing that "Colorful Colorado" sign to clue you in to the strong native sense of irony here

also, not sure how the idea of picking up "some random guy i've talked to on the internet" would fly

Quite liked Denver. Did a months training there. Amazing views from the office tower block we had. The altitude makes such a difference though! Got drunk on 5 pints

@Kermit you just gotta sell it right. Don't say "some random guy". Say, "this guy who goes by a sketchy pseudonym and has been snooping on my private information".

3

4:07 PM

@Shog9 ahhh. much better.

the idea of meeting people through the internet has always been strange to me

@FreshPhilOfSO yeah, after 10 years here that still catches me off-guard.

@FreshPhilOfSO what is it with you and pints? is everything in your life described in pints? that query took 2 pints to run ?

@FreshPhilOfSO you'd be surprised how many people have no idea how much affect the altitude has on their alcohol absorption. it's like they nodded off during the discussion of dalton's law of partial pressure and other related biochemistry saturation lessons

@Kermit i'll be there in 3 pints

make it 2

Go home, sit around working my way through a six-pack and quiet discussion... Come back here, have a beer, I LOVE YOU GUYS

4:09 PM

If I had a nickel every time I'm nodded off with Dalton giving me some partial pressure saturation...

@Shog9 don't you just sit around all day drinking? since you are remote

@bluefeet yes, but let's be honest: it's mostly coffee

by volume at least

@Shog9 pints of coffee?

@Shog9 irish coffee?

@Shog9 comes out as awwhhhh whuvv ooohh gyzzz

4:12 PM

@Shog9 what does a "community manager" do ?

@Kermit taunts paranoid users

herds cats

answers the phones

sweeps the floors

the usual grunt-work

@Shog9 paranoid users? i don't feel taunted enough

yells at mods for looking at users info

@Kermit obviously you're not paranoid enough yet

you need to get out to Colorado

@Shog9 i'm waiting for another revelation

@Shog9 if i do that, then i'll be posting a lot of questions on meta

4:14 PM

@Kermit all chat logs are indexed by Google. Everything you've said here is on your permanent Internet record. Forever.

@Shog9 already knew that

don't tell me my questions and answers are indexed too

user58869

@Shog9 oh no!

@Kermit that'd just be silly. Who wants to read those?

I can bring up your access logs in real time and watch what you're doing on the sites.

@billinkc tmi

Every time you mis-click a vote button, I see it and laugh

4:16 PM

@kermit queries have been known to take pints to run! I wasn't on call one night, but got a call anyway 'cos the person on call didn't know the data.

@Shog9 I love when you are in here tormenting @Kermit

@FreshPhilOfSO hey ... i do my best drinking while on call

Had to run a 3 pint update

usually bourbon

@FreshPhilOfSO that's what ... 150k rows?

that reminds me, I still need to find a place that sells tin cup. Gonna try Castle Rock.

4:18 PM

Heh. Think it was ~250 million. A days worth of SMSs

@Shog9 yeah ... it's not bad for a $21

@FreshPhilOfSO sounds like a kegger

@Shog9 does your employer know you spend so much time chatting

@shog9 how odd. I'm currently drinking a pint of Harvest Pale, brewed by Castle Rock brewery

Brewed in my glorious home town :)

This question needs nuking/moving

This would be more suited elsewhere. We don't know the Wordpress schema, so can't really help — FreshPhilOfSO 42 secs ago

5:08 PM

Sent to the wordpress site

@JNK you send it!

I did!

I cc'd you on it via email

nice

:)

5:12 PM

I'll stop pestering you about that now

it does not bother me, but thanks

5:31 PM

@JNK never got your DM with the email address

@bluefeet you could send table-valued parameters if both sides are 2008+

@swasheck was a joke, of course

gotchya

Q: Latitude and Longtitude Distance Calculation

0

I'm using Mysql and I am trying to calculate the distance in meters between two different longitutde, latitude coordinates. I wrote a stored function in MySQL but tt calculates just 1 for each row in select query.There is my stored function in the following segment: DELIMITER $$ CREATE DEFIN...

mysql functions user-defined-functions

@AaronBertrand welp I forgot that one side is 2005:(

5:41 PM

Not sure the OP understood my comment. Maybe I don't get the question

@AaronBertrand I'm leaning towards just joining to the table until we upgrade to 2012 then I can use a tvp

@swasheck Kermit was concerned about his email being viewed by mods

@FreshPhilOfSO Thug Life

@Zane don't you mean this?

Q: Left Join when > 0 rows but doesn't match where clause

Ugh! My grandma gave me one of those.

0

So I have a query where if there are no matching join in the table it show zero which is what I want. However, if there are matching rows but they don't match the rows in the where clause, I don't get a zero I get nothing. SELECT * FROM PUEvents PUE1 OUTER APPLY ( SELECT ...

sql sql-server

Huh?

0

A: Index for table in SQL Server 2012

The best way to find indexes for your table is sql server profiler.

6:04 PM

@Zane he's messing up his condition

he should do the left join against a subquery that filters that table with the date range

As soon as you reference PUC in the where clause, you turn the outer join into an inner join. Move those clauses to the ON clause. — Aaron Bertrand 15 secs ago

This actually sounds like an absolutely terrible way to find indexes for your table. — Aaron Bertrand 11 secs ago

@AaronBertrand good thing you are back

Attending my first session of the conference - flying home in a couple of hours

oh....well, I meant back in the Heap

Right, quite temporary

...just popping in and spreading hate where I can

Please set up some sample data on sqlfiddle, and describe expected results. Word problems suck. — Aaron Bertrand 6 secs ago

6:11 PM

Tasty, delicious hate.

@AaronBertrand I tend to think of it as more of a righteous fury.

@AaronBertrand difficult advice because sql fiddle has been really unreliable lately

Storing dates as string

0

Q: Trouble with Dates in SQL

I'm having some trouble with dates in an SQL query. I want a select query where one date is further on than another, so this is what I started out with: SELECT * FROM TableA WHERE (DATE1 < DATE2); This returned some pretty inconsistent results. I belive the problem lies in the fact that th...

sql

sigh

@bluefeet they could also just provide some sample data in the question, if sqlfiddle is down again

@AaronBertrand lunacy. madness. to prove your value as an expert, you must divine the structure and data (and version and edition for that matter) with mystical incantations

6:26 PM

@AaronBertrand I agree with you but people are soooo lazy

they just want you to guess at everything

@bluefeet then they get down-voted

"So for row 51" - where the f is row 51?

Somewhere in Nevada?

If my tremors get any worse today I'm going to cut my fucking hand off.